You’re not a proper Hollywood star until you’ve been asked to do a TV cameo. That’s TV cameo, not TV role. A TV role means that you’re no longer getting movie roles (Kiefer Sutherland, Geena Davis) or that you’re pensionable (Martin Sheen). A TV cameo means you’re hot, but not so hot that a little self-promotion wouldn’t hurt.

Latest Hall of Cameo inductees are actual legend Dustin Hoffman, parachuted into HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, and alterna-Lohan Christina Ricci, set to appear as "not a patient" in ABC’s medical drama Grey’s Anatomy.

Ricci’s Anatomy will air right after the 2006 Superbowl, while Hoffman decorates Curb’s season finale. We’ll see both episodes in the UK in, oh, ages.

After the break: Best and worst TV cameos

Top 5 A-list TV cameos

1. David Duchovny as himself, but not quite himself, on the The Larry Sanders Show. The nuts, the dressing gown, the horror… (1998, ep: Flip)

2. Garry Shandling (aka Larry Sanders) and Tea Leoni (Duchovny’s wife) in The X Files (2000, ep: Hollywood AD)

3. Liza Minnelli as Lucille Austero on Arrested Development. Less a cameo, more a regular guest spot, but Liza deserves a bit of rule-bending (2003-4)

4. Cher and Elton John doing the gayest cameos ever on Will & Grace (2002)

5. Friends. All of it. No TV show has ever been more gratuitously strewn with big-name cames: Bruce Willis, Julia Roberts, Brooke Shields, Chris Isaak, Jean-Claude Van Damme, George Clooney, Elliott Gould, Elle Macpherson, Dakota Fanning, Danny DeVito, Donny Osmond, Christina Applegate, Hank Azaria, Jeff Goldblum… please let me stop now, it’s Christmas Eve and my nose is running.

And the worst celeb TV cameo of all time:

Anthony LaPaglia as Daphne’s brother in Frasier (2000)