My £10,000 dentist bill – for a Steptoe smile

Liz Jones

AT LAST! A profession we can hate more than politicians, journalists, vivisectionists, bankers and estate agents. It was revealed yesterday that dentists are routinely ripping us off: milk toothing a system that rewards them for performing as many ‘units of dental activity’ (UDAs) as they can.

I would be gnashing my teeth were I not so afraid of damaging my £10,000-worth of veneers.

What a week for those of us who look after our molars. My routine involves oil pulling, which means swishing sesame oil until it becomes thin and white; getting a spray tan so my teeth look whiter; using only UltraDex mouthwash and toothpaste (no idea why; it’s the most expensive), drinking no red wine or tea but as much water as I can manage to avoid bad breath; and putting my electric toothbrush head in the dishwasher once a week on Extreme.

First there was Flossgate, where scientists told us the nightly ritual of winding little bits of string round our fingers and then getting said string stuck between our two front teeth, before it breaks off and leaves a little tail, is pointless, handing a get-out-of-jail card to every man in the land who fails to floss in case the time he takes to do so means we’ve fallen asleep and won’t be available for sex.

And now an investigation has found that dentists extract teeth to avoid offering complex treatment, for which they are paid the same by the NHS, and cram in 60 patients a day in order to earn up to £500,000 a year. It all sounds as painful and crowded as my mouth, aged 11. My teeth were a disaster: overlapping, chipped (my mum used to wash my hair over the kitchen sink, as the bathroom was too cold, and the terror of this waterboarding made me scream, thus breaking a front tooth in half) and a dingy yellow, with myriad shiny black fillings: as a child, I never thought fillings weren’t normal, or even had a cause.

After the painful extraction of four teeth, I then had braces cemented, top and bottom; on the braces were little hooks on to which, each night, I had to attach tiny rubber bands in order to pull the teeth apart, like a mini tug of war.

This went on until my O-levels, meaning I never went through the

rites of passage normal in adolescent girls: kissing boys, smiling, talking, eating – food would get stuck in the wire.

BUT at no point did I demur. The dentist was, in those days – the 1970s – entirely free, which meant patients were enormously grateful and therefore uncomplaining. When my mum, in her 40s, paid a rare visit for herself, the dentist extracted every single one of her teeth without even asking her permission: when she got home, our Labrador attacked her, unable to recognise her shrunken face.

I further ruined my teeth when, in my early 20s, having finally been liberated from the braces, I removed all the enamel by subsisting on Cox’s Orange Pippins for the next ten years.

Now vaguely solvent, and having met Martine McCutcheon on a shoot and marvelled at her perfect smile, I duly got the number of her (private) dentist, and went to see him on Harley Street (I spotted Dame Maggie Smith in the waiting room: perfect teeth. They had to stain them for Downton Abbey). Hence the £10,000 veneers, and the eradication of the hair-washing chip.

What no one, least of all the dentist, told me was my teeth would be drilled to tiny stumps; without the veneers, I resemble Steptoe: the father, not the son.

The veneers have to be looked after, like children, with hygiene appointments, special soft super-floss, and definitely no spinach (they stain; I couldn’t resist a saag aloo one evening, and my then husband told me I looked as though I’d been dug up).

They also last only ten years before having to be replaced. The other day, a veneer on an incisor fell off. I was so angry, I threw it in the fire. I booked an appointment. ‘Did you keep it?’ the dentist asked from behind his yacht, um, mask. ‘No.’ ‘Oh, you should have. A new one will cost £900.’ I’m still scrabbling in the ashes.