2004-03-11 - 1:16 p.m.

Like all men in white coats, dentists are scabrous, twisted fiends who practise the dark arts with an avarice verging on the maniacal. It�s not that I don�t really trust them, I just think that every move they make is geared towards siphoning off as much dough as they possibly can, keeping them in as many golfing holidays and Kenny G CDs as they can digest at a single sitting. I can�t help but imagine that whenever they cast their gaze into my vulnerable, quivering mouth, they see nothing but little toothy gold slabs just lining up to whipped out, ground down and snorted off the tanned belly of a dentally-perfect minor soap opera nymphette.

My name is Paul, and I am an anti-dentite.

Yes, I just got back, and yes, my mouth does still hurt, thanks for asking, and I�d answer you at length if moving my lips didn�t feel like trying to manoeuvre an oversized dinghy around a miniature ornate fountain.

It was a new guy. My old guy left as he just started haemorrhaging bank notes from his pancreas or something. It got off to a great start, with him displaying the kind of congenial philanthropy his profession are known for.

The news was on the TV that is angled straight into your face to keep your mind free from thoughts of blood and overdrafts.

Me: It�s terrible about these bombing in Madrid.

The Dental Assistant: I know, I�ve got family in Madrid.

The Dentite: Well, now you�ve got family ALL OVER Madrid. Hahahahahahapass me that needle.

The usual oral pleasure follows as bits of metal are wedged in there so my jaws resemble those diagrams of snakes that have to unhinge their mouths to ingest small mammals. Not that I can swallow, but all I can taste is blood and cold steel. It�s like a party in my mouth, except it�s one of those parties where gay guys get together and nail each other�s scrotums to bits of wood with no anaesthetic.

Not that there�s anything wrong with that.

Anyway, it�s at this point that he decides to run through the pricing options. These are but two. I can have a deluxe cap, which is virtually undetectable, even to the most insistent of tongues, and is personally endorsed by George Hamilton and The Archbishop of Canterbury. Or I can have the �budget� option, which is made by blind orphans in a Far East cap sweat shop, is only technically legal, and could fall out as early as that same day. �There is, of course, a price difference..� Of course. The difference is something in the region of Marlon Brando�s annual expenditure on having the waists of his trousers let out, so I go cheap.

I can HEAR the sharp intake of breath. �Well�.OK�,� he says, whilst his mind races to figure out just how crappy a job he has to do to have me come back and have it replaced enough times so that it costs as much as the deluxe version anyway.

�One more injection here�you�ll just feel a little prick��

Boy, he really hits that nail on the head sometimes.