'In Flanders fields the poppies blow / Between the crosses, row on row ... ' Photograph: Graham Turner / Guardian
It's getting towards that time of year when people on telly sport red paper poppies on their lapels as a mark of remembrance and respect for the millions who have died in the wars of the past century and beyond. I do a bit of telly work - reviewing the papers on BBC News 24, mostly, plus the occasional bit of rent-a-punditry - and this year, as with every other year, I won't be wearing a poppy.
Last year Channel 4 News' Jon Snow was at the centre of a howl of moral outrage - led by that guardian of middle-class morals, the Daily Mail - when he said he wouldn't be succumbing to pressure to wear a poppy on air. Jon and I discussed this at some length by email and he said to me that he believed that one of the reasons so many soldiers died in wars was to preserve freedoms such as the choice not to wear symbols like the poppy.
My reasons are a little different to Jon's. First, I'm nowhere near as high-profile a TV presence as he is (thank God) and so my decision can therefore be much more personal rather than taking a stand. I - like pretty much everyone else with two brain cells to rub together - have a huge sense of respect and gratitude for the service of people who fought in the front line against fascism. However, I feel strongly that that's a personal belief, not one I need to display by the wearing of a poppy. Respect comes from within, and I know that I don't lack it.
I also feel that the wearing of a poppy has become part of our national obsession with visible grief, and that makes me uncomfortable. I show my emotions to my friends and the people I love, but I don't show them in any public forum, and nor should I or anyone else be expected to. When I review the papers, I'm doing so in a professional capacity as a journalist and commentator: the audience doesn't need to know about anything in my personal life and nor am I going to share that.
However, there's an increasing sense that we must all wear our hearts on our sleeves and that if we don't take part in outpourings of grief, whether it's for the death of a princess, concern for a missing toddler, or the senseless shooting of a little boy in Liverpool, then we must somehow be lacking in humanity. We are exhorted to take part in two-minute silences for the passing of a footballer. On a street corner near my home in west London, a makeshift shrine has been maintained for several weeks following the ugly murder of a local man. I've read the tributes and I'm sad and disgusted that a young man was killed in a stupid confrontation, but I don't feel the need to lay flowers and sob openly for him, or indeed for anyone I don't know.
So for me, the pressure to wear a poppy - and I've had to explicitly refuse a poppy from producers at the BBC before now - amounts to pressure to be more open about my emotions than I'm comfortable with. I, together with everyone else who appears on television, am entitled to keep my emotions private. I know how I feel about war, just as I know how I feel about many things, and I'm not given to wearing my heart on my sleeve. And so, by extension, I'm not going to wear a poppy on my lapel.
