One of the greatest-ever radio reporters was Edward Murrow, whose dispatches for America’s CBS network in the early Forties began with a springy ‘this is London’.

Murrow was based in our beleaguered capital for much of the Blitz. London was the target of near-nightly bombing raids by the Luftwaffe and it often seemed the war would be lost, our country with it.

Yet Murrow remained calm, impeccably chipper. He did not over-dramatise the blood-stained devastation he saw. Who knows what tremors he confronted in private but when it came to broadcasts, he kept his upper lip as stiff as any in Britain.

Weeping: Graham Satchell breaking down on camera while reporting from a memorial in Paris

I thought of the professionally undemonstrative Murrow when watching a BBC television reporter, Graham Satchell, break down during a live interview from Paris this week.

Father-of-three Mr Satchell, 46, was standing in front of a memorial to victims of the Islamist gunmen who caused such bloodshed last Friday. He was nearing the end of a chatty conversation with BBC1 Breakfast programme presenters and was telling us that Parisians had not lost a sense of hope when, rather modestly, he turned his face away from the camera lens, overcome by emotion.

A damp moment ensued. Mr Satchell recovered his composure to utter a brief sign-off before the screen panned back to London, amid gooey words from a presenter about what a ‘hugely difficult, distressing time it has been for everybody involved in that story’.

I should make clear at once that - had I been reporting the Paris outrages - I doubt I would have done any better than Graham Satchell in remaining stoical. It has indeed been a deeply upsetting story, particularly for those of us who are middle-aged fathers.

Age does that to you. I have looked at photographs of the youngsters mercilessly machine-gunned in the Bataclan music hall and have seen, in their fresh, innocent faces, an echo of my son who is in his late teens and loves going to pop concerts. I was far colder emotionally, more ruthless, when young.

Nor can Mr Satchell be accused of being out of step with the age. Britain today is a more touchy-feely place than it seems to have been in the Forties. Perhaps war makes you tougher. Or perhaps we then had a culture - you could almost say a more manly culture - in which it was considered improper to betray your inner wobbles.

Public displays of sorrow were regarded as faintly unpatriotic, both before the war and deep into the Fifties. You only have to watch the plays of Terence Rattigan to see that. Flare Path, written in 1941, about Lincolnshire-based RAF bomber crews and their families, is a masterpiece of emotional restraint.

I have looked at photographs of the youngsters mercilessly machine-gunned in the Bataclan music hall and have seen, in their fresh, innocent faces, an echo of my son who is in his late teens and loves going to pop concerts

The 1945 film Brief Encounter, directed by David Lean, can also be held up as an example of the spareness of British life when it came to expressions of love and despair.

One uttered one’s most tumultuous surgings with no more force, outwardly, than one asked for a sugar lump for one’s cup of tea. As for weeping? The national motto might as well have been ‘no tears, please, we’re British’.

This is no longer the case, as moist-hankied Graham Satchell proved on BBC Breakfast the other morning. But he is not the only one who has been at it.

Our Prime Minister, no less, the supposedly chillaxed David Cameron, was spotted looking decidedly watery round the headlights at the England-France football match at Wembley on Tuesday night. Was it a speck of dirt that blew into his eye? No. He was moved by the sound of so many voices blasting out France’s national anthem in defiance of the ghastly Islamist murderers.

Does it matter that a Prime Minister is prone to tearfulness? Logic says yes - we want a leader to take decisions on the basis of sober, unsentimental analysis, after all - but, in fact, the answer is probably no. Winston Churchill was a notorious cry baby and it did not seem to do him any harm.

Another leaky hose in recent days has been the judge in the Becky Watts murder trial, which recently ended. Mr Justice Dingemans, passing sentence on Becky’s murderer, started to sob as he handed down a life sentence on her step-brother Nathan Matthews.

Judge Dingemans is a father of two daughters, one roughly the same age as poor Becky. Having passed sentence, and having blurted out that the trial was extremely difficult for all concerned - though most of all for the grieving family - M’Lud Dingemans rushed from the court for the privacy of his chambers, where, we can but presume, he buried his face in a large kerchief and had a good old parp on the nostrils.

Quentin Letts says he cries more the older he gets

A judge with a heart? No bad thing, many will say. But a judge is meant to operate to the dispassionate codes of the law. And judges hear many bad things - tales of murder and rape and suffering. If they are going to turn into garden sprinklers at every grim trial, might it not become a problem, not least in terms of influencing juries?

No, the problem, in my view, is that the currency of public distress has in some ways been devalued. You need only watch a TV reality show for a few minutes before some cake-show contestant or jungle-adventure participant or dance-show waltzer starts bawling.

Footballers’ dribbling these days is not limited to the midfield either. They cry terribly if they miss a penalty. Young men gasp with emotion when told their A-level results. What does all this male weeping tell us? Is it a sign of cultural collapse, of national weakness? Historically, men were meant to be the strong ones. Actually, I suspect women were always just as strong, but you know what I mean. The stereotypical bloke would jut his jaw, put his arm round his chicklings and his spouse, and defy Fate to do her worst.

Bravado may sound absurd but it was good for morale. It stiffened our sinews in times of warfare.

One does not wish to be alarmist, but such times may soon return to our island if militant Islam has its wicked way. In the event of attack, I hope we can rediscover our once-famed phlegm.

Look at the Britain captured in a wartime propaganda film, London Can Take It, narrated by American journalist Quentin Reynolds. It showed the nightly routine of London as the Blitz bombs fell.

You can watch it on YouTube and the tone is remarkable. Remember: this is a propaganda film, designed to inspire support for Britain in America, yet there is a total lack of self-pity and gushiness. Reynolds’ voice is matter-of-fact, and as he says ‘London can take it’ there is a lick of defiance in its tone. Compare that to the coverage we have seen of the Paris attacks. I do not seek to pass any sort of moral judgment on this. I simply state it as fact.

Broadcast and print reports from Paris have gone big on the distress of Parisians.

Even when reporters have mentioned ‘life goes on as normal’, they tend to add ‘of course, life will never be normal again’ or such dilution of any defiance being shown by the French people in their time of grief. I am a terrible weeper myself, although I feel ashamed of it in public and try to brush away tears.

Every year I have to read a Remembrance Sunday list of the war dead from the school my family used to run. Two weeks ago, I had real difficulty getting through it without breaking down into tears. Again, age is my onion.

I remember my father reading the same list every year and I hear his voice in those names. The more we live, the more sadness sticks to us like moss.

The BBC’s Graham Satchell was, to his credit, embarrassed by his slip in professionalism. It would plainly become impossible if news reporters kept dissolving into tears like quivering sissies (now there’s a word not often used in these feminised days).

If they did, the News At Ten would have to be extended by a further 15 minutes while everyone mopped their eyes and ironed their crumpled chins.