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Good morning. I can’t help feeling just a bit sorry for Brooks Newmark, the former minister for Civil Society caught sending explicit pictures of himself on social media to the supposed ‘Sophie Wittams’. He has had the grace to blame no one but himself for his sudden downfall. He’s not, of course, the only one who has lived to regret a moment of wild indiscretion. People in public life often have low boredom thresholds, a strong sense of their own desirability and a frustration with the routine, unrewarding bits of their job. But there’s another element in this sad and somewhat comic story. The undercover journalist was working for a Sunday paper and it has been suggested that the whole operation was an attempt at entrapment. The paper has defended itself claiming the expose was in the public interest – i.e we need to know that male MPs are using social media to meet women. Even so it is one thing to be caught in a compromising situation which you have engineered yourself; quite another to be lured along by a male journalist. Most of us have Walter Mitty moments; flashes of fantasy in which we enjoy unlimited power, riches, success or sex. A therapist said to me recently: Everyone has a secret life. And I suppose that also means everyone is entitled to a secret life, a psychic space where desire and fear play themselves out and I begin to discern what I really want, who I really am. It is only when the opportunity appears to realise those unlived fantasies that we have to make a choice of whether to pursue them or resist. In Christian spirituality this is classic case of failure to resist one of the universal temptations. All kinds of people; married or single, male or female are drawn to the idea of a secret, guilt free, sexual encounter. The attraction tells us we are creatures of desire; that there is always more to us than our outer respectability reveals. Traditional language would say that the devil has many disguises and tempts us to disaster in many ways. If when an invitation comes, you find yourself scheming your way to turning your secret fantasy into reality you run the risk of implosion. Not only does your private world collapse in a highly embarrassing way but your outer world is ruined too. Finding yourself to be neither a respected professional figure, nor a successful Casanova must be the ultimate deflation. But it is not the end of the world for any of us. Being completely humiliated by the exposure of your own fantasies is a terrible ordeal but it is also a moment of opportunity. You see the strangers you have been entertaining within in their true colours. That is the moment to make some better, wiser choices, a first step to greater integrity.