Tears for end of era as we pay lip service to British reserve

The singer, whose messy split from Katie Price was plastered all over the tabloids last year, fought back tears when he was asked questions about his children following his ex-wife's marriage to Alex Reid.

"No one is going to take my kids away from me," he replied, clearly distressed, before cutting short the interview.

There was a time when such a public, albeit not deliberate, show of emotion would have made him a laughing stock. But nowadays people are more likely to be criticised for bottling up their feelings, than for turning on the waterworks.

The Australian singer isn't the only famous person to break down under the glare of the TV cameras.

When Michael Vaughan announced he was stepping down as England Test captain a couple of years ago, the occasion overwhelmed him and his Yorkshire grit momentarily crumbled. Even the usually straight-faced Andy Murray was overcome with emotion following his Australian Open defeat to Roger Federer last weekend.

"I can cry like Roger, it's a shame I can't play like him," he said in his post-match speech.

It's the kind of emotional outpouring that you suspect Deborah, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, wouldn't approve of. The duchess, who has endured her fair share of tragedy and pain, has spoken out against the "sloppy-sentimental" culture of "self-pity" in modern society.

"Grief – it is part of life," she said.

"The disaster of someone dying was talked about for a bit and the person was mourned, but you didn't go on about it and take pills and have to be counselled."

The 89-year-old said that the wartime generation simply got on with things, but psychotherapist and broadcaster Phillip Hodson says attitudes have changed.

"I understand where the duchess is coming from, but the realities of the challenges and struggles in 2010 are very different to those experienced by people who lived through the Great Depression and the world wars.

"We sometimes get people saying, 'How did we manage to get through World War Two without counselling?' And the answer is with great difficulty. Many British families weren't the same when the men returned home.

"A year before the war started there were 3,000 divorces in Britain and 20,000 after it ended and it's got worse ever since."

Hodson, a spokesman for the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), argues that the stiff upper lip attitude was forced upon us.

"Back in the Middle Ages we were a belching, farting culture and we didn't mind who knew it. We were tough, but we weren't emotionally repressed."

What changed, he says, was the emergence of the British Empire. "That's where this idea of the stiff upper lip comes from, because suddenly we had to pretend to be superior in order to govern places like India."

This stoicism was reinforced in the aftermath of the horrors of the First World War.

"Because so many people died, there became a sense of 'don't tell me your troubles, I've got enough of my own.'

"There was a kind of funeral fatigue and then there was the flu

epidemic which killed even more people than the war itself, so you can understand why people kept their feelings to themselves."

These days, however, the mass public displays of grief that followed the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks have become the norm.

"I think we should see resilience as a good quality, but by the same token keeping our feelings bottled up isn't good for us, it's bad for our health and it's bad for our relationships and there's plenty of evidence to back this up," says Hodson.

"If men, for instance, are unhappy at work then what's the point in them saying they're 'fine' when they're clearly not.

"There was a very sad story of a paramedic who had seen one car

accident too many.

"His wife said he had been told to get counselling but he didn't and he killed himself."

Some people, though, prefer to keep their emotions in check and feel that counselling has gone too far.

But Hodson insists therapy is offered for a reason.

"We don't want people to be emotionally incontinent and we don't need counselling for everything, but I'm glad the services are there for when we really need them."