Uh-oh, who ate all the pies? Only the nation’s favourite PE teacher, that’s who. Say it ain’t so, Joe. But unfortunately, he’s already ’fessed up.

Technically Joe Wicks has been at the biscuits, bacon sarnies and hash browns, but it all boils down to delicious allotropes of hydrogenated fat. Yummy! We can all identify with that.

And now, tummy! Ditto. So very, very ditto. Let she who has never polished off a bucket of mini millionaire bites cast the first aspersion. In truth, many more of us slip off the health wagon every day than ever manage to clamber back on again.

But there’s something really rather discombobulating to discover our idol has feet of clay and abs of the Pillsbury Doughboy. Even those among us with a soft spot for dadbods were taken aback by the sheer swiftness of Wicks’s descent into – there’s no other word for it – mortality.

We would never have known had Wicks not posted rueful pictures of himself topless. Dear Lord, has he never heard of voluminous unbranded hoodies? It’s what the rest of us carrying a few post-pandemic pounds are wearing, 24/7.

But no. Of course not. He’s got too much self-esteem to hide his paunch. Either that or he’s planning a celebrity weight-loss DVD – in which case we need to see him looking a lot less perky, please.

It’s a familiar former-reality-star trajectory, ideally kicked off with staged paparazzi “candid” shots in the park eating lardy cakes and radiating shame. Then the highly emotional weight-loss journey, finishing off with the Skinny Legend denouement and a round of “new me” magazine articles. Job done. Until the next slew of rent-a-revelations.

Wicks, however, isn’t channeling a smidge of guilt, much less displaying the requisite tower of self-loathing. He seems more mildly rueful than flagellatory, as though losing weight – and indeed gaining it – is no biggie.

But then that laid-back, down-to-earth, no-sweat (sweat!) approachability is very much his USP. Before 2020 he was the Body Coach, a niche go-to gym expert for those that like high-intensity interval training and such. But then, in our hour of need, he went mainstream.

Cameth the lockdown, cameth Wicks to our rescue; a sitting-room Tarzan, urging us all to put it in, put it out and shake it all about. Great for the kids. Arguably even better for their mums.

Don’t judge us. He was more than butcher’s-dog-fit. He had a nice shiny mane and soulful brown eyes. He was on our side. And trapped indoors, he was the only man we saw from one week to the next. Those were Stockholm syndrome star jumps. Every last one. But they worked.

Imagine our cognitive dissonance to discover that even a 36-year-old demigod can’t afford to rest on his laurels. Especially not when he’s been getting a little too up close and personal with Mr Kipling.

So does Joe Wicks’s fall from grace make him a hypocrite or just human? That’s an easy one to answer because we like him and we just know his hair smells lovely.

Other instances of conspicuous honesty have proved problematic for the perpretators

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex

Despite their fondness for lecturing the world about climate change, they find it awfully hard to resist a private jet (21 in two years, apparently). Bless.

Most recently they were called hypocrites for attending a concert urging action on climate change – and then heading home in a Dassault Falcon 2000. We’re not even sure what that is, but we can guess it’s not good for the planet.

Matt Hancock

The then-married health secretary, who was so keen to forbid hugging during Covid, was caught on camera getting unmistakably jiggy with his (equally married) lover. Awks. Not a great look at a time when physical contact beyond family “bubbles” was outlawed. He subsequently resigned and for some unfathomable reason bought himself a black roll-neck sweater.

See also multi-millionaire Chancellor Rishi Rich pretending to own a Kia, and Boris Johnson stating categorically there were no parties at Downing Street.

Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis

The gorgeous Hollywood golden couple fairly rocked their fan base when they blithely revealed they seldom wash. Eww. The pair of mucky pups told a 2021 podcast that showering was a rarity in their house. He sponges down his pits and bits; she rinses her face. But they only ever bathe the kids when they are visibly dirty.

Fern Britton

The former This Morning presenter dropped from a size 22 to 12 in 2006 and credited her five-stone transformation to “lots of hard work”. Yay.

When she eventually admitted she had actually had a gastric band fitted, the backlash over her “betrayal” was extraordinary. The upshot was that when she told programme bosses she wanted to leave, they made no attempt to dissuade her.

“Gastric bandgate ruffled a  few feathers,” she said later. “I think perhaps I became a bit of a liability to ITV. I really don’t know.”

We think she probably does know, deep down. Rightly or wrongly, we expect more from our celebrities. Apart from Joe. We’d be just as happy with less.