YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Is there anything you’re yearning to know? Send your questions, on any subject, to the contacts given below, and we will do our best to answer them...
Q
My late father, who was born in 1923, went to the dentist as a young man with one bad tooth, and had the lot taken out there and then and had dentures fitted, as was the done thing. How many people have false teeth these days?
Mrs J Russell, Shrewsbury, Shropshire
A
Around six per cent of adults have no natural teeth, and it’s estimated more than 11 million wear full or partial dentures.
The number of people with no natural teeth shoots up to 15 per cent for 65 to 74-year-olds and 23 per cent for over-75s.
But more than a million people aged 16 to 44 wear dentures, and that number is expected to rocket in coming years, with so many struggling to see an NHS dentist.
In the early 20th century, it wasn’t unusual for people in their late teens or early 20s to have all their teeth removed, even when there was nothing wrong with them. This was actually more common and desirable among women, so future husbands would not have to pay for dental bills.
In the 18th century, wealthy people wore dentures made from hippopotamus or walrus ivory, or actual human teeth.And it was a roaring, gory trade, with teeth harvested from battlefields – most famously from the 50,000 dead soldiers following the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Thousands were shipped in barrels to England, becoming fashionable dentures known as “Waterloo teeth”.
Q
ln the film Warlords Of Atlantis, a diving bell was featured that I remember seeing at Torquay’s Tor Bay harbour in 1988. Where is it now?
Chris Bryan, Clay
Cross, Derbyshire
A
British fantasy adventure movie Warlords Of Atlantis, from the makers of cult classic The Land That Time Forgot, was released in 1978 and starred Doug McClure and Peter Gilmore searching for the lost city of Atlantis, journeying deep into the ocean in a diving bell which is then attacked by sea creatures.
The giant green-copper coloured prop, made from fibreglass over steel, did end up in Torquay, and was used in a fountain.
It was then bought in 1999 by a man who intended to build a themed bar around it.
The diving bell was later put up for sale on eBay.
It features a moving hatch and windows, and if you have a spare £10,000 you can now buy it from movie auctioneers Propstore. The company, which has an office in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, says the full-size prop is “designed in a 19th-century, Jules Verne-esque style, bearing a plaque which reads, ‘The Aitken Submersible Observatory, Boston 1896’”. And Propstore also has two pairs of foam gorilla hands you can wear from 1988 movie Gorillas In The Mist – yours for £389.
Buyers have also been able to bid on Captain Picard’s chair from Star Trek, a Stormtrooper helmet from Star Wars, Olivia NewtonJohn’s drive-in date outfit from Grease and Peter Fonda’s crashed chopper from Easy Rider.
Q
With regard to the bad conditions of our roads, what percentage of our road tax goes to the repairs?
Alistair Kerr, Trefnant, Denbighshire
A
What we call road tax is actually vehicle excise duty, but it has not directly paid for roads since the 1930s.
This money goes to the central government fund of the Exchequer, which is spent on everything from the police to hospitals as well as road repairs.
For the 2022-23 period, road tax brought in around £7.3billion, which is up from £7.1bn the previous year, and the highest amount ever raised.
For the same period, fuel duty raised about £25bn.
Latest Department for Transport figures show that in 2021-22, about £11.8bn was spent on national and local roads in the UK, which is £0.7bn less than the previous year.
None of that central pot of money is used to repair potholes – local councils are responsible for that job.
Toll road fees also go towards road maintenance costs and improvements.
There are 23 toll roads, 18 of which are river crossings, and they raise around £370million.
There are no longer any in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
Swinford Bridge in Oxfordshire, over the Thames, is an obscure, privately owned toll road, which was sold at auction for £1.08m in 2009.The charge for a car to cross is just 5p.
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