It would seem that it is impossible to switch on the TV at the moment without watching someone blub uncontrollably.

Be it regretful politicians, scorned ex-wives of footballers, wannabe pop stars and more recently contestants of a baking show. What’s got into everyone? Where has the British stiff upper lip gone? Every September is rung in with the start of the new series of X Factor and so we begin the 12 weeks of torture, watching the contestants almost float away in a sea of tears week on week. They cry because they DON’T get chosen, they cry because they DO get chosen. They cry because they get told they can’t sing, they cry because they’re told they can sing.

Just how many times have we heard, through choked spluttering, “It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, I’m doing it for my Grandma who told me on her deathbed to live my dream.”

Perhaps, given the extraordinary coverage this programme gets and the pressure of airing your vocal talent, or lack of, in front of an audience of millions, I can in some way understand this display of watery weakness.

What I have struggled to understand, are the tears from the contestants on BBC2’s Great British Bake Off, the TV phenomenon of the year. This has been a show that has united and divided us as a family. We have watched it avidly together.

Week on week we have looked on with bemusement as baker after baker has done the head and shoulders to camera shot after being thrown off the show for a soggy bottom or an uneven texture.

Our family favourite Howard, a gentle looking man, actually looked like he had just faced a family bereavement.

Tears streaming down his face as he announced that it had been the most amazing thing he had ever done, virtually pronouncing that life was not worth living now his peachy buns were not hitting the mark.

Really Howard? Please reassure me that you will struggle on after this cruel insult, else I may have to send round the Samaritans.

I’m not sure when it suddenly became so cool to cry. I’m not insinuating that there is anything wrong in crying when it actually has some real emotion behind it but surely you can’t just turn on the waterworks at every opportunity. There is still a need to keep things in perspective.

I’m not adverse to a few tears myself but I think that nearly 20 years of dealing with a variety of people in my job has probably toughened me up.

I’m not totally devoid of the empathy gene, I’d be a pretty heartless person if I didn’t understand how some of my patients must be feeling at the thought of a wisdom tooth extraction but come on guys, crying rarely helps.

I still have nightmares at the memory of a particularly disastrous dental procedure during university, not irreversible I hasten to add, that caused me an embarrassing bout of snivelling in front of the poor patient and my tutor. I thought I was concealing it well with a dental mask and glasses, only to be totally humiliated as the associated nose- running filled the mask and dripped slowly out of the bottom, onto my leg. I wonder if that patient has ever recovered? I would hazard a guess that this was more than they bargained for when agreeing to allow a novice loose in their mouth.

Crying is a very primitive emotion. A sign of pain, discomfort, fear or danger. With that in mind, I could imagine seeing dentists’ waiting rooms full of blubbing messes.

But no, it would seem that being eliminated from the pies and tarts week on the Great British Bake Off or being voted off the X Factor for destroying a Whitney classic is far more emotional. Man up you lot.

There’s a whole generation that are watching your emotional outbursts and becoming desensitised. Please can we try and get through a whole episode of X Factor, if we must, without watching the familiar shoulder shudder.

It’s taken a generation to stop patients walking into a dental surgery being reduced to tears. We don’t want to spoil it all over a few cracked petit fours or ropey rendition of Dancing Queen.

Let’s revert to that stiff upper lip and take it on the chin. Live your dream, just don’t cry about it.