Get a grip, chaps

There’s too much male blubbing in public life

Last Sunday’s London Marathon had me in tears. Not as I battled agonisingly through the wall at 20 miles. No, I was at home on the sofa, with the digestives. And yet again — it happens every year — I blubbed softly at the inspirational tales, the people running in memory of friends who’d died, the sheer personal achievement of everyone involved. This year, though, another thought entered my reckoning. It was the memory of another male who confessed to crying at the television: Ed Balls. A couple of months ago he told how he often cries at the Antiques Roadshow, when someone says that a family heirloom means more to them than any amount of money. ‘Incredibly emotional,’ he called it. Then there was Ken Livingstone, damp-cheeked at the tales told by people in his own campaign video. We live in an age when it’s perfectly acceptable (possibly, indeed, electorally advantageous) for a grown man to admit to crying.