Despite decades of neglect and abuse - plus a passion for liquorice torpedoes and Mrs Hearld's cooking - I still have my own teeth.

Which has its advantages. For one thing, I can safely drink from that glass of water at my bedside in the middle of the night. And if I develop a coughing fit while guest speaker at the WI, I won't splutter a full set of dentures on to the lap of the lady on the front row.

But having teeth brings its own problems. Like trying to find an NHS dentist.

I knocked out an old filling recently while chewing on one of my wife's blancmange specials. It was moulded into the shape of a car. I must have bitten into the engine block.

Anyway, after failing to find a health service dentist this side of Shanghai and walking around with a hole in my tooth the size of Stump Cross Caverns, I decided to bite the bullet (bang goes another filling) and go private.

It must have been five years since I'd gone to the dentist. Apathy, you understand, not cowardice!

So I was amazed how much things had advanced. For one thing, the receptionist was welcoming and smiley and actually called me Mr Hearld. Under the counter she was rubbing her hands with glee as the Las Vegas cash signs lined up in her eyeballs for the jackpot.

There was soft music playing in the waiting room but that did nothing to ease the anxiety of being strapped into that horizontal chair, a knee on the chest and being asked to "open wide."

The dentist was a pretty, wee slip of a thing with a gleaming smile. I bet she isn't hooked on liquorice torpedoes. She just didn't look the sort of person who would train for years to perfect inflicting pain and torture on other humans.

It was all a far cry from my childhood days when the school dentist would visit, poke around in our mouths and set an appointment for the unfortunates who needed treatment. These visits normally coincided with a dragon of a nurse who would line up all the boys, stick her hand down our trousers and asked us to cough. She should have been first on the sex offenders' register.

The school dentist's torture chamber was like something out of a medieval dungeon. The butcher would throw one poor child out bleeding while another lamb went shivering in to the slaughter. They would jam a smelly, rubber gas mask over your face, take out all your teeth without as much as a "good morning", then throw you out on to the streets still groggy.

It's so different these days. Now they hypnotically talk you through every stage, there's a screen over your head so you can witness in living Technicolor your own tooth neglect as they move a pinhead camera from one cavity to the next. Red wine? Tea, coffee? Liquorice torpedoes? Tut-tut.

You don't even feel the needle going in. Now they smear on a paste that tastes of bubble-gum to numb the injection.

And while they drill away with something developed for hewing coal in the Selby pits, they further anaesthetise the pain with constant chatter. Have you had your holidays yet? Isn't it cold out there? Why do they always ask questions when they have their foot, and the entire collection of instruments, in your mouth? I was always told it was rude to speak with your mouth full.

All this time, there's a pretty nurse holding a vacuum cleaner nozzle in your mouth to suck up all debris. Honestly, the indignity of two women holding down a full-grown man and delighting in the power.

Suddenly it's all over. Didn't feel a thing. But the real pain is yet to come. They save the fullest explanation for the bill - and their costly plan to bring back that Colgate smile.

It cost me £106 for one filling. Okay, the dentist did explain that the last time she went that deep she was drilling for oil in the North Sea.

But then came the hygienist - another 30 or 40 quid for the pleasure of having my mouth poked and scraped in an attempt to pull out the filling I'd just paid for.

Bang goes that holiday in Mablethorpe, my wife's facelift and food for the family.