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The revelation that David Mellor liked to make love to his mistress wearing Chelsea football kit revived sad memories of BBC anchorman Frank Bough, whose downfall followed revelations by a prostitute that he made love to her dressed in her underwear with his face covered in her make-up. Bough compounded his problem by admitting that he was also a cocaine addict. As far as we know, Mr Mellor's worst excesses amount to reciting Hamlet in the nude and having his toes sucked. But they have led to renewed demands for his resignation on the grounds that a man who cheats on his wife has no right to be a cabinet minister. Less censorious commentators have simply asked how a public figure can be so stupid as to put his head on a chopping block - particularly when it becomes clear that the lady in question regarded him as a buffoon from the beginning.

To me the most depressing thing is that the two obviously decent men have fallen flat on their faces and caused irreparable damage to their careers. It could be argued that neither of them deserve serious condemnation. Bough admitted that he started to sniff cocaine because of the sheer pressure of his job. Mellor seems to have become wildy smitted with Antonia de Sanchez at first sight and made dozens of 'sloppy' phone calls - which she taped and played to amuse her friends - before he persuaded her to spend the night with him. He seems to have behaved like an infatuated schoolboy rather than a hardened Casanova. But the football kit and the toe sucking certainly arouse some interesting questions about his fantasy life.

This is certainly what fascinates the general public: the question of how an apparently normal, respectable-looking person can have such a 'weird' side. Psychoanalysts find the problem perfectly simple. Every child is a raging bundle of desires. He longs to hear himself praised, and to feel loved and admired. If these cravings are not satisfied, then they linger on in the adult - almost as if a small child has been trapped in a dungeon inside us. And when it thinks no one is looking, the child dresses in ladies' underwear or demands to have its toes sucked.

Now England has always been something of a joke to our continental neighbours because of its sexual oddities - the French even call flagellation le vice Anglais. An 18th century headmistress described how a rich old banker paid her a large sum to punish her pupils once a week, while he peered through the hole in the next room and watched them being beaten on their bare behinds. This feverish interest in sex may have something to do with our natural puritanism which makes us relish scandals - particularly when they concern the famous and the royal family. It also explains why we enjoy gasping in horror while the tabloids serve up more prurient details.

But there is another complication. Roughly five per cent of all animals - one in twenty - are dominant; they are natural 'achievers'. These achievers have a stronger desire for praise and admiration that most people. Most of us would like to be famous; in the achiever, the desire for fame is a raging thirst. Yet fame is not all they want. They would also like to leave some mark on the world, something that would benefit their fellow human beings. So all 'achievers' are self-divided. Part of them wants to realise ideals; the other part wants to show off and be admired.

In effect, this turns such people into a kind of Jeckyll and Hyde. Edgar Allan Poe once told a female admirer that he wrote solely to express his ideas, and that he didn't have the slightest desire for fame. The next day, he suddenly blurted out that this was a lie. "I love fame, I dote on it, I idolise it. No man lives until he is famous..."

This second outburst also illustrates the curious honesty and decency that often characterises such 'dual personalities'. In fact, from the psychological point of view, this is one of the most interesting things about them. I came across a fascinating example of it in my first publisher, Victor Gollancz. He was a genuinely religious man, a visionary, who caused outrage among his fellow Jews by protesting that ex-Nazis should be forgiven rather than put on trial. Yet he could also behave abominably. One day while I was sitting in the office of my editor, I heard indignant shouts of "How dah you, how dah you', followed by a series of loud crashes. I asked, "What on earth's that?" I was told, "Oh, it's only Victor kicking X downstairs." Apparently these outbursts of rage were so normal that no one paid any attention. Other inconsistent traits - such as his marital infidelities, and his tendency to examine his sexual member standing at the office window - are described in the biography of him by Ruth Dudley Ward. Yet my own acquaintance with him left me in no doubt that he was a genuine idealist and something of a saint.

So no one need be particularly surprised when the famous prove to have some strangely un-adult characteristics. The more dominant and talented a person is, the less likely he is to have sorted out his inner-balance, and the more likely he is to have some childish Master Hyde pining in some secret dungeon in his mind. Shaw once said: "Our interest in the world is the overflow of our interest in ourselves", so no one can be really adult until that interest in himself is satisfied. And while a person is sexually active, Master Hyde, with his obsessive craving for attention, remains a constant threat to the public persona.

What the French know perfectly well, and what the English are prone to ignore, is that most talented people have a strong sexual urge. A pop star once told me that his chief reason for going into rock and roll was the desire to sleep with as many girls as possible. A politician, an actor, an artist, may not be quite as frank, but you can be sure of one thing: the idealistic urge to noble achievement is only half the story. Master Hyde continues to look for an opportunity to stuff himself with jam tarts, or their female equivalent. If, like so many of our public figures - Mr Profumo, Lord Lambton, Major Ronald Ferguson, Cecil Parkinson, Frank Bough and the unfortunate Mr Mellor - they allow Mr Hyde out to frolic with an indiscreet lady, the result can be a shattering blow for Dr Jeckylll. The best such men can hope for is that the British will one day grow up and lost that feverish interest in sex that amuses and astonishes the rest of Europe.

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