A musical number about a woman’s letter to her husband on the second world war frontline unlocked my ability to blub – and made me a happier person
I
am sure I must have cried as a child, but by the time I was a teenager it had stopped. It was probably a boarding school thing. Very stiff upper lip. My parents are not the most emotionally available human beings, either. I like to tease them by saying: “I love you.” You can see the panic in their eyes. They will normally say: “All right then, bye.”
My gran died when I was about 18, and I was sad, of course, but in terms of tears there was nothing, no water. I never cried at movies. I didn’t cry on my wedding day, nor at the birth of either of my daughters. It never alarmed me. I actually thought I might have underactive tear glands. Looking back, it was probably all about control.
In 2023 I went to see the musical Operation Mincemeat for the first time in the West End. What struck me was the humour – a lot of it was taking aim at the public school culture I grew up with. I didn’t cry then but I did have the urge to see it again. I think it was maybe the third or fourth time of going when the song Dear Bill got me. It appears halfway through the musical and the lyrics take the form of a letter from a woman to her husband, who is away fighting in the second world war. I was shocked to find myself crying. I had to go back to see it with my wife, Yael, to prove to her that I could now cry. She definitely thought I was a bit emotionally repressed. When the song came on I took her hand and dabbed it on the side of my eye. Her face was one of utter shock.
