Gotcha!

And all we have to say about it — now that the sordid little details are coming out — is tsk, tsk, tsk. We know what you’re doing that you shouldn’t be, and, on the face of it anyway, it doesn’t look good.

You read People when you should be reading Proust. You couch potato instead of pruning your flab. You chow down Twinkies and snub tofu.

You are — pick at least two of the following — indulgent, wasteful, shiftless, selfish, silly, excessive and gluttonous. Definitely gluttonous.

But, gosh, it feels terrific, doesn’t it?

Darned right it does.

What we’re dealing with here are guilty pleasures. Nothing more than innocent indulgences you treat yourself to, then feel guilty as all get-out about when everything is said, done and — nine times out of 10 — eaten.

They’re little things, like pigging out on the junkiest of junk food or taking off work to play. This is what the people we asked told us, anyway, though we imagined far more and far worse.

See, we kinda hoped treasure trooper Mel Fisher sat around watching old reruns of Sea Hunt. The truth: Fisher was hard pressed to come up with a single guilty pleasure.

In one wild, crazy moment we imagined our own environmental treasure, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, picking forbidden wildflowers with total abandon. The truth: We felt just awful even thinking such a thing.

Finally we hoped, oh my, how we hoped, that Donald Trump’s guilty pleasure was buying the biggest, glitziest, costliest gizmo around and never, ever saying one word about it.

The truth: We doubt it’s possible, but how would we ever know?

At any rate, forget the fantasy and read on for reality.

FOOD FIRST

Here’s something to chew on, and it shouldn’t be hard to digest: The No. 1 guilty pleasure that comes quickly to almost everyone’s lips, naturally enough, is food. And honestly, people, what pure, unadulterated junk food it is.

We have the affable Buffalo Bob Smith — “It’s Howdy Doody time” — indulging in Fifth Avenue candy bars. But he can’t feel too guilty. “They used to be one of the show’s sponsors and every time I eat one, it takes me back to those days,” says Buffalo Bob, a Fort Lauderdale resident.

John Lomelo, former Sunrise-mayor-turned-convict-turned-talk-show-host, goes for plain, old Neapolitan ice cream that he has known and loved since kidhood. Any brand, any time. Never known for his restraint, he once ate two or three cones daily. Now he’s diabetic and needs none of it. So he only indulges twice a week.

For tennis ace Wendy Turnbull, it’s a love match with desserts. Each year she leaves her home court west of Deerfield Beach and returns to her native Australia. There, she’s met by six siblings and assorted relatives, each bearing greetings and a mega-calorie dessert.

“I feel guilty when I do eat them,” Turnbull says, “and I feel guilty if I don’t.”

Finally, here she is, Miss America ’79. She’s Kylene Barker Brandon, whose guilty pleasure rests easily on her shoulders and invisibly on her hips.

“Once a Miss America, always a Miss America,” says Brandon, who went from regal to retail by opening two Palm Beach/Boca dress shops. “You’d hate to be out and have someone say, ‘She doesn’t look like a Miss America.”‘

So, the former Miss A., who is “over 30” (no more details, please), and a few pounds heavier than the day she was crowned (“I won’t tell how many”), tries to look her royal best.

She works out — faithfully. She does her hair and makeup — faithfully. And she eats sensibly — faithfully, except when she goes to the movies. Then, and only then, she indulges in a favorite candy bar: a KitKat. Or sometimes Peanut M&Ms.;

But first, she skips dinner so the candy calories won’t show. And second, she eats one candy bar, no more. Just one!

Once a Miss America, always a Miss America.

IT’S A SECRET

Aha! We suspected this all along.

Alice Skaggs, Palm Beach County’s No. 1 supershopper and longtime head honcho of its consumer affairs department, is guilty, guilty, guilty of a buying binge.

“Six pair of shoes and I bought them on impulse,” she says, recalling the dirty deed of a few years past. “Six pairs of shoes, I paid $259 for them and then felt terrible. It’s wrong to spend that kind of money. It’s terrible. Terrible!”

For the record, the shoes were her favorite brand and she wears every pair of the darned things so it’s not as if she pulled an Imelda Marcos. But still, her job is telling people to buy carefully. And sensibly.

Also, for the record, Skaggs’ home has one room overflowing with bargains. Dozens of rolls of toilet paper, tissues, paper plates and paper towels. She has new patio furniture, purchased at a great price, except she never sits on the patio.

Skaggs usually doesn’t buy this stuff herself. She has a pal who shops for her and can’t resist a deal. He keeps her neck deep in good buys. Fact is, Skaggs hates to shop, except maybe in the shoe department. Just hates it.

The lesson here is that guilty pleasures probably wouldn’t even make people feel guilty if these folks weren’t so wrapped up in their jobs and their image.

Another case in point: This concerns longtime disc jockey Sonny Fox, whose chipper voice on Y-100 (WHYI) forces people out of bed to face another day. You expect his early morning banter to be wild, wacky and on top of the news. And it is.

But here’s the deal: Each night, when Fox watches the news, he turns the sound off, puts an album on and lets the music rip. Then he sees what connects.

Sometimes, the results are hilarious. Sometimes they’re amazing. And always, they’re entertaining.

How about the time the Beatles were singing Revolution and the news clip featured strife-as-usual at Eastern Airlines? Or what about hearing Never Gonna Give You Up while watching a segment on an anti-smoking campaign?

And he feels guilty about this?

“Sure, because I feel like I should be listening to the news because I need to be informed.”

Not only that, he feels downright guilty for even talking about this. “I don’t normally tell people because it sounds so strange, and people will think I’m crazy,” he says.

Too late, not that anyone sets their sanity standard by early morning DJs. And besides, he has good company in the confessional.

Check out top-dog society band leader Marshall Grant, who goes home and busses the bewhiskered faces of his four-legged friends. Three basset hounds — alas, no longer living — once were recipients of Grant’s unbridled affection. Now he smooches four cats.

“I confess. I’m a closet dog and cat kisser,” he says. “My wife and I, we’re just mad about them.”

GET PHYSICAL

The subject at hand is folks who are hopelessly driven and how they react once they leave the fast lane: They feel guilty, of course.

Take it from Jim Greene, if you can get him to stop long enough to talk about it. Greene, you might recall, is the West Palm Beach lawyer who got the ID cards out of Palm Beach but kept the island safe for shirtless joggers. Yes, the man is often parked in his office, but when he’s not, he’s out on Lake Mangonia rowing with a vengeance.

It’s pure pleasure. And he feels real guilty about it.

“Time on the water is time away from my little boy,” says Greene, father of Travis, who’s 1 1/2. “I try to see him twice a day, but he’s a lot more fun when he’s awake.”

Regardless of guilt, Greene rows. After all, he’s a lawyer. He can argue with the best of them. He can rationalize. He can make it sound as if what he’s doing makes perfect sense.

“My way of dealing with guilt is to ignore it,” he says. Besides — and here comes the lawyer’s rationalization — he says he needs that physical push as opposed to just wanting it.

Incidentally, his wife, County Court Judge Kathleen Kroll and an equally astute attorney, “has little tolerance for either the working or the rowing,” he says. To say nothing of the rationalization.

Same case scenario: Palm Beach Community College has a powerhouse of a president. Ed Eissey, as everyone knows, is vivacious, vocal, visible and stuck to his job with some kind of super glue.

Still, there are times when he checks out and goes fishing. Palm Beach Inlet is his territory. And snook is his fish. But this early morning fish fetch doesn’t make him late to work — usually.

“When the snook are really running I stay because I know I’m going to get the big one,” he says. “If I’m a little late to work, no one says anything. But I really do have a sweet/sour feeling about staying later to fish when I should be in my office.”

Understand that snook now has a legal season and summer — Eissey’s favorite fishing time — is off limits. It’s unfortunate. On second thought, maybe it’s fortunate.

“Otherwise, I’d be out there even more often,” he says. “And I’d feel even more guilty.”