But she was also fond of expressions that summed up the feeling of relief — an underrated emotion, I feel, with none of the glam or pizzazz of love and hate and the like. Perhaps this is because it is an emotion most known to and beloved of the female working-class of a certain age — a notoriously underimagined and underdocumented part of our demographic, with the singularly blissful exception of Alan Bennett. And her favourite was, when an experience which had been both bitter and sweet came to an end, “Oooo — it’s lovely when it stops!”

I recalled this sweet little foible of hers recently when the third series of America’s Next Top Model drew to a conclusion. “Are you going to feel a bit better now it’s over, do you think?” my husband said gently while I snuffled and blubbed myself into a frenzy on the sofa as Eva the Diva, the shortest and feistiest girl of the latest crop, won her crown. Eva cried, Tyra Banks cried, Janice Dickinson cried, but no one cried as loudly as me. And I’d been doing it for eight weeks, every time another would-be supermodel got evicted — even when it was ones I didn’t like, like Cassie the constant compulsive vomiter or creepy Kelle, the black girl who accused herself of looking like a monkey. It feels lovely now it’s stopped — but pretty soon I know I’ll get restless and look around for a fresh sob-fest.

Until then, I’ll haunt the Sky channels looking for reruns of old reality shows, for I have indeed measured out my life by the tears of strangers. I spent the first night of my honeymoon in a palatial Sussex hotel weeping like a fiend because Nadia had just won Big Brother; indeed, one photo I took that night, ostensibly of my husband to commemorate the happy time, actually cuts the poor sod’s head off while over his shoulder Nadia is framed, frozen in her perfect moment for ever, emerging from the house, also in tears! If ever, the Lord forfend, I was called upon to be an actor for one night and to bring forth tears, I swear I wouldn’t think of my Mum and Dad dying, but of the beautiful Katrina from Airline going back to hospital, hand in hand with her groom, wearing her wedding dress, just a few hours after the ceremony, still suffering from the renal cancer that had haunted her apparently golden life.

What does it say about me, that I am far readier to cry over people I don’t know than people I do? Well, we’ve already established that I’m hard and unnatural and the Worst Mother in the World (copyright Daily Mail), so not a lot new, I imagine. Mind you, my Dad was the kindest, most decent and honourable person who ever lived, with not a hint of a kink, and he cried when the dog died but not when his beloved mum did. Which apparently is quite common at both ends of the social scale, among both working and upper class; to show emotion over minor rather than major matters, as with the old Sloane habit of crying in church at Christmas carol services rather than at funerals.

Perhaps there is something in the idea that it reflects better on a person’s character to cry over things that are less rather than more important, in that tears are essentially a luxury. For instance, I don’t cry over starving children or endangered species — but I give more generously to the charities that help them than any of the self-righteous leakers I know. When I think about the people who cried when the Princess of Wales died, they tended to be a lot more on the sweeter side than people who saved their tears, ostensibly for something serious but probably because they were dirty misogynists who believed that princesses should be seen and not heard.

I was once on a radio show arguing with a Marxist cultural critic over reactions to the death of Diana, and he made a right booby of himself by approvingly quoting that famous humanitarian Keith Richard on his lack of response: “I didn’t know the chick.” Wow, that’s the voice of socialism — that we feel sympathy or empathy only on behalf of people we know personally. Isn’t it lucky that William Wilberforce didn’t subscribe to that “ there-is-no-such-thing-as-society” school of thought! The Queen, usually considered to be the last bastion of always-appropriate behaviour, perhaps took inappropriate weeping even a bridge further than me when she was seen to shed not one public tear on the death of her daughter-in-law, yet a short while later shamelessly snivelled in full view of the public when the royal yacht was pensioned off.

Still, at the end of the day a good cry is a good cry, with all the cathartic relief that the phrase conjures up — you don’t hear anyone advocating the benefits of a good sulk, or a good mope. Mind you, there is something rather creepy about men who claim to cry at certain romantic comedies — even creepier when it’s their wives advertising their sensitivity, as Sandra Howard did recently over Michael’s penchant for sobbing at the end of Sleepless in Seattle. It’s as if he’s made some sort of cold-blooded study of how to win female voters by appearing to be in touch with his Feminine Side — as opposed to the Dark Side to which it’s always been assumed he had a hotline.

You can just imagine him burning the midnight oil, hacking it out “Foreplay, performed — tick! Nappies, changed — tick! Sleepless in Seattle, wept at — TICK!” Too much info, Mike! No, I personally will stick to crying at the trembling, tremendous sight of beautiful young women finding their perfect moment — partly because it reminds me of being one, against all odds, and partly because of how the road to success for young women is so paved with distraction and sabotage, be it by sex, envy or the loathing that sees them dead in ditches with such monotonous regularity.

So I’ll continue to cheer them on through my tears — and because it makes me so cross to hear them criticised as victims of instant celebrity syndrome, who’ve never done “a proper job” yet are rewarded with riches and fame just for being notorious. That’ll be unlike Camilla Parker Bowles, then — 57 years old, and never had a job of any description in her life except kneeling to the Clown Prince. Give me Jade Goody any day; more class, more graft.

On second thoughts, though. I’ve just e-mailed my husband at work and asked him the most ridic thing I’ve ever cried over, and he said it was the Wrigley’s Extra chewing gum ad with the MMMBop song by Hanson; “You cried once with happiness at how pretty and hopeful all the girls in it were!” I don’t remember this at all — but if he’s right, then I’m wrong, and I need to pull myself together RIGHT NOW. Any farther down this mad road and I’ll be weeping over the fiction of Tony Parsons. And to shed anything other than tears of laughter over same is surely one definition of a mind come undone.

julie.burchill@thetimes.co.uk