Moderate ratio, surprisingly male, admitted to cheating (4,2,8)
I believe the answer is:
fair to middling
'moderate' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'ratio surprisingly male admitted to cheating' is the wordplay.
'surprisingly' indicates anagramming the letters (a surprising ordering of the letters).
'male' becomes 'm' (common abbreviation).
'admitted to' indicates putting letters inside.
'cheating' becomes 'fiddling' (fiddle can mean to cheat or con).
'ratio' anagrammed gives 'airto'.
'airto'+'m'='airtom'
'airtom' going into 'fiddling' is 'FAIR-TO-MIDDLING'.
(Other definitions for fair to middling that I've seen before include "Unremarkable" , "unexceptional" , "Not bad" , "OK?" , "average" .)