Smile

It's hard to believe that this used to be my passport photo. I look more like Zapata as portrayed in The Simpsons.

I remember the time of my first passport photo, in the days when you had to go to a professional photographer to have one taken.

The photographer was a pain in the arse, but aren't they all? I sat down in front of the camera and stayed still, waiting for him to press the shutter. In the days of celluloid they did not want to waste any more film than they had to, so he spent a long time fiddling about with the settings before telling me to smile. I did not want to smile and told him so.

"Come on," he whined, "You can manage a little smile, can't you?"

I held my ground and he eventually - and reluctantly - took the shot. These days you are not permitted to smile, which is why all men look like terrorists in their passports.

Sometimes people would ask me why I never smiled unless I was laughing. To me it felt as though I was smiling like a baby with bad wind, but my face just fell into vacancy without any instructions from me.

Apparently, the Ayatollah Khomeini was an avuncular barrel of laughs when he was not on camera, but considered smiling an undignified act for someone in his position. I wonder how the situation in Iran would have differed if he had just laughed a few times on camera when in office. I had quite a few good Iranian friends in the days of the Shah and I know that they all like having a good time. Poor sods.