08:54 AM EST on Wednesday, January 19, 2005

"What the hell were you thinking?"

Jay Leno famously asked that question to movie star Hugh Grant, after Grant was arrested on a prostitution charge in Los Angeles. Now it seems appropriate to ask Richard Hatch the very same question.

Newport resident Hatch was the winner of the very first edition of Survivor, the show that kicked off television's "reality" trend. He won $1 million.

Everyone saw it. Everyone talked about it. Fifty-one million people watched the finale.

In the summer of 2000, Hatch was one of the most famous men in the land. Not exactly beloved, perhaps, but famous.

For one thing, he liked to go around naked as often as possible. David Letterman liked to call him "the fat naked guy."

In the course of that first Survivor, Hatch played the other competitors the way Jimi Hendrix played guitar. He was shrewd. He was sly. He was cunning. He was manipulative.

And he was definitely not stupid.

At least, he didn't seem stupid. But what else could explain yesterday's development, in which Hatch has agreed to plead guilty to two counts of tax evasion. And for what? For not declaring the money he won on Survivor.

Hmmmmmmm . . . 51 million people. Do you think maybe there was an IRS agent or two in that group?

Federal prosecutors charged that Hatch filed two false individual tax returns.

According to court documents, his 2000 return omitted his Survivor winnings and his 2001 return omitted the $321,000 he was paid by a Boston radio station, where he worked as an on-air radio personality.

Perhaps the problem was not that Hatch was stupid, but that he never stopped scheming, even after he got off the South Pacific island of Pulau Tiga.

But it's one thing to fool Sue Hawk and Rudy Bosch -- it's another to mess with the IRS.

Now, no one likes taxes. Heck, even President Bush doesn't like taxes, and says so every chance he gets.

Everyone tries to pay as little as they have to.

Individuals play that little game of chicken with the IRS, trying to get away with paying as little as legally possible. (Note the word "legally.")

As for corporations, they send high-priced lobbyists to Washington to get tax breaks written right into the law of the land. Slick.

But when you win a big fat check on TV, in front of those 51 million people, you might as well just pony up to the IRS and be done with it. There's going to be more red flags on your return than there were in the old Soviet Union.

Hatch is scheduled to be arraigned in U.S. Court in Providence on Monday. For this occasion, I'm guessing he'll be wearing clothes.