how I pronounce "r" sounds: a velarized labiodental approximant?

Disclaimer: I may have made a lot of mistakes in trying to work this
out as I'm not a "professional" linguist in any way; I'm just an
amateur interested in language and phonetics whose confused by an
apparent speech defect I appear to have.

Lately I've been trying to learn how to pronounce the alveolar trill,
with little success. I can pronounce uvular trills easily, as well as
all kinds of bilabial trills, but the alveolar always escapes me. I
decided that if I just take my /r\/ sound, as I assumed it to be, and
mess around with that, I might end up with a trill. I've been standing
in front of a mirror, trying to see what my tongue does when it tries
to pronounce both /r/ and my "normal" rhotic consonant.(does anyone
else sometimes feel that phonetics is just an excuse to make funny
sounds?). What I found surprised me. My articulation of the r sound
seems to involve the tip of my top teeth touching the back of my bottom
lip, and my tongue assuming a velar position, bunched up at the back of
my mouth. If I try to keep my mouth open (not allowing the labiodental
articulation), I get this vague glidey sound that I assume is a velaral
approximant. If I do the opposite, and don't allow my tongue to assume
a velaral position, I end up sounding like Jonathon Ross... (for non UK
citizens: Jonathon Woss is a comedian/pwesenter who is well known for a
speech impediment that causes him to pwonounce "r"s as "w"s). After
some experimentation, I realize I am actually, with some effort, able
to articulate /r\/, although due to my apparent unfamilarity with it it
causes my speech to sound pretty laborious. I'm left with the distinct
impression that I have some kind of hidden speech impediment...

About my dialect/speech:
I'm a native of the south east of England, and I speak a dialect of RP
British English that is slightly "Esturine" (glo''al stops and so on ;)
).
No one has ever remarked that my speech sounds unusual in anyway, and
I've never been told I have a speech impediment/abnormality.


After a little bit of googling, I cam across this:
http://kiri.ling.cam.ac.uk/mark/LAGBr.pdf which seems to say that a
labiodental rhotic sound is sometimes found in east England. There's no
mention of velarization though... I'd appreciate anybody with actual
lingustics knowledge with any help/information in trying to work this
out, cos I can't find anymore literature that suggests what I seem to
be seeing/hearing/speaking. I realize this is probably got you real
linguists/phoneticists fuming in frustration at my ignorance, but
please be patient and explain where I've gone wrong, and what my "r"
really is :p

.

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