You know how Hazel Blears is always smiling? It's a pinched, crazed smile, sure, possibly to the extent that you wouldn't join her in an elevator, but the overall impression is invariably one of good cheer. Right? Well, here's a trick. Next time you see a picture of her, try covering up the mouth.

Woah! Not so happy now, eh Hazel? Now you look like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. Like you've just had me tied to a chair in a warehouse because somebody told you I'd been stealing your acorns. Yikes. You're almost as scary as Caroline Flint! Who'd have known?

I would. It's a trick I learnt years ago, while doing the most soul-destroying work available to man, which is working on a celebrity news website. So many pictures, so many teeth. Mouths, I learnt, are like headlights. They dazzle. For the truth, you have to cover them, and look to the eyes. I used to use my Travelcard. Sometimes it was a little sad, as with Britney Spears, who peered over it like a cow, lost in a field, hearing wolves, far, far away. Sometimes it was terrifying. I always thought that Myleene Klass would have outed herself as a Satanist by now, for sure.

Lots of political smiles this week, and not just from Blears. The wider Alan Johnson's mouth gets, the more his eyes look afraid. Jacqui Smith's mouth just looks uncertain, but her eyes look like she's falling off a chair. Harriet Harman seems braced for violence. David Miliband always looks as though his eyes are just leaving his mouth to get on with it, so that the top half of his head can utilise the free time for something more important. Yvette Cooper never smiles. Ed Balls smiles and watches, to see how it is going down. David Cameron, unexpectedly, does much the same. When George Osborne or Lord Mandelson smile with their mouths, their eyes look like they hate you.

Gordon Brown's smile is, needless to say, a disaster zone. Cover up the straining, rictus mouth, though, and something quite astonishing happens. The eyes look soft, the flesh around them is wrinkled.

Suddenly, he actually looks as though he means it. I suppose he might just be nuts, though.

No sniggering

An interview this week, with the US shock-rocker Marilyn Manson. I didn't see his eyes once. Big sunglasses. His mouth, though, which was painted black, smiled a lot. He was staggeringly drunk, and you wouldn't want to introduce him to your grandmother, but should you ever have the chance to hang out with Manson, in a safe place, where he doesn't have access to edged weapons, I'd definitely recommend it.

For all that, I found our encounter a strangely depressing experience.

To interview a rock star in a hotel room is to see them shorn of all their props. No cheering crowds, no groupies. Just a man who, increasingly, reminds you of that bloke from your school who couldn't get a girlfriend, didn't really wash and drew a pentagram on his pencil case with Tippex.

In any sort of social hierarchy, rock stars are at the top. Film stars worship them, Tony Blair went gooey for Noel Gallagher. And yet put Marilyn Manson in a gym hall, at some sort of school reunion, and, multimillionare rock star or not, he'd still be the guy headbanging at the front, by himself, while everybody else sniggered into their hands.

It made me wonder if our inner teenager ever goes away. We can twist and feint and pretend to be anyone we like, but we're basically cast in stone by the time we're 14. It's awful.

A cute accent

I have sympathy for George Orwell, who we learnt this week was nearly banned from the BBC for having a weird voice. Orwell had been shot in the throat, smoked a lot and had tuberculosis, which is a poor launchpad for any radio career, but his real crime was apparently his faux-cockney accent. The implication is that he did it on purpose to sound less posh.

I bet he didn't. When I was 14, I had a Scottish accent. These days, most of the time, I don't. “Did you leave Scotland when you were a child?” people often ask me. “No,” I'll say. “When I went to university.” And they'll look embarrassed, and I will, too. It's gone.

Only, it hasn't. It's just coy. Get me speaking to Scottish people, and I sound Scottish. I was on the radio myself the other week, with one Scottish person and three English people, and I was all over the place.

It sounded like there were five of us.

Get me drunk, and it's the same. Worst of all, record my voice in a situation where I, myself, can't hear it (in a crowd, say) and I also sound Scottish. It's as though, the rest of the time, I'm trying not to. I can only assume my subconscious must be a terrible snob. It's the reverse of Orwell.

Don't look now

Back on smiles, it strikes me that some readers may have read the top item in this column, and decided to stick their thumb over the mouth of that constipated imbecile to the left. What do those eyes say? From memory, it should be something like: “Damn, I forgot my contact lenses.” I hope that comes across.

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