I am thus curious as to why this mature, educated, former RAF man, surrounded it seems by a well-grounded, loving family and many solid friends prepared even to support his character before a judge, would be daft enough to engage in such risk taking, especially when everything you need to keep hidden depends on the known-to-be wayward antics of some under-employed, cash-strapped gas-fitter?
Just engaging out of interest in a broader point...defo not looking to drift the thread by being in anyway controversial.
Human beings (all of us) are nowhere near as smart and evolved as we think we are. We all suffer from the effects of confirmation and cognative bias as well as a ton of other physcological phenomenons. I recommend Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow" as a must read for anybody who wants an insight into how close we still are to our cave dwelling forefathers in terms of rational thought.
Everyone here will have seen our fellow human beings do incredibly, incomprehensingly dumb stuff for no apparent meaningful reasons. And most of us will hold our hands up and admit we have done the same - I know I have. A lot of the time, the thing that has the biggest single influence on any given outcome is simply pure luck.
Background, education, IQ, life experience etc - no matter how blessed one might be in those departments - offer no guaranteed immunity to irrationality, poor choices and bad decisions.
That's why humans need rules, laws and structures. In some occupations, we need a lot of them.