We’re born with 20 teeth and grow into 32.
I now have 22 with two fake ones on the top right.
The whole set are shiny and white and allow me to smile confidently.
But not for long.
Here comes the history of the destabilisation of my septuagenarian mouth
My extractions started when I was 23.
I was working as an actress at the Royal Court Theatre. I sat, in the stalls, with Terence Frisby – a friend, protector and writer of ‘There’s A Girl in My Soup’ – I was his professional wife and we were in John Osborne’s ‘SENSE OF DETACHMENT’. Although we called it a ‘Sense of Disinterest’.
‘A harshly received work from 1972, which has no plot and features a scene where an elderly lady recites at length from a hardcore porn catalogue. Part of the play involves actors planted in the audience pretending to protest, (THAT WAS ME AND FRISBY) this began to trigger actual heckling, actress Rachel Kempson leapt into the stalls and assaulted some of the troublemakers in a much publicised incident. A representative review in the Financial Times declared, “This must surely be an end to his career in the theatre”.
It was very nearly the end of my career; I went to the dentist to have my wisdom teeth removed.
Mr.A. anaesthetised my mouth. I could vaguely see him as he knelt on top of me and attempted to pull out four of my teeth with a pair of antiseptic pliers. His glasses were splattered with my blood as I heard him ask the nurse to
‘Get me my notebook I don’t remember doing this at college.’
I was later informed that I should have been hospitalised as so severe was it to have four teeth removed in one go. In the event I wore a scarf round my face like ‘The Sundance Kid’. The local newspaper The ‘Boreham Wood Post’ wrote an article on the local girl does good. I was interviewed wearing my bandit mask, underneath which I looked like a chipmunk with cheeks full of acorns.
My next encounter was with Julian Lloyd Webber, not Andrew’s cellist brother – a very expensive orthodontist in London, who tipped the chair upside down and burned bits off me. I had four roots in one tooth, one more than most people. I had root canal work and a massive hole in my gum as well as my bank account.
I was told that Hollywood movie stars had all their back teeth removed to give them high cheek bones and the cadaverous look of Greta Garbo. I still looked like a chipmunk stockpiling for the winter.
So now I’m sans back teeth and wisdom teeth a top right and a precarious molar.
And here’s where it gets dodgy. I blame Martin Sheen. We went to Uckfield Picture house to see ‘NYE’ a screening from the National. I had a bumper box of popcorn, bit on a kernal and before you could shout ‘encore’ I’d dislodged a tooth.
Trauma and diabetes causes gum disease, both of which I’ve experienced over the last five years. The tooth wobbled. The dentist bonded it. £200 and two weeks later the bonding was removed, filed down, then finally prized out of my mouth, thats the bonding not the tooth. No refund just the humiliation of a dangling tooth.
I now have a loose tooth on the left back and a loose tooth on the top right.
I phoned a dentist in Victoria.
‘£300 for an extraction’
Fuck that for a game of soldiers I said, although it came out as
‘No thanks.’
So now I’m faced with a dilemma. Do I have my wobbly tooth on the top right removed ending up looking like a gummy slag from the 40’s whilst covering my mouth when I laugh and avoiding seeds and other offending materials or do I live with the wobble.
In the end it will have to be extracted. My dentist is an Arsenal supported with a firm grip and not a great chair side manner. I can’t afford an implant so I’ll have to have some kind of fakery glued into my mouth so I can still smile at the camera.
‘Not still doing telly?’ I hear you shout. Well yes I make regular appearances on a disreputable station shouting the odds and grinning.
I won’t grin any more and with luck I may be able to have a gold grill put in my vintage gob so I look like Missy Elliott
Measuring a life by teeth is in anteresting exercise. Born without any, ageing and losing them one by one so you end up looking like the toothless baby you came in as. Let’s face it none of us are Benjamin Button, and if we’re lucky enough we grow old as opposed to dying young.
I’ve done pretty well keeping most of my gnashers. I use an electric tooth brush and a tiny dental stick between the teeth. When it gets stuck I panic. I use Hydrogen Peroxide and TCP to kill bacteria, then spray fancy scent all over me. I smell like an apothecary with Jo Malone overtones.
I’ve learnt to suck my food, which makes eating a cucumber and celery a mission, and I’ve learnt how to nibble like a rabbit. I don’t have insurance so any dental work means I have to sell my dawter, my wedding ring and the air fryer.
I blame successive governments for turning dentristy into a luxury item. If we want cake holes like Rylan Clerk and Katy Price then give us more NHS dentists and fewer greedy bastards who think nothing of bankrupting an OAP for a fucking filling.