WHAT do Ugly Betty, Miranda Hobbs, Tom Cruise and I have in common?

Yes, we are all dedicated Scientologists waiting for the mother ship to come back and rescue us from the depravity created by you weird, wasteful humanoids.

Actually, that's not true - Betty's not a true believer, she's just in it for laughs (didn't you know, Scientologists are a hoot!).

The truth of the matter is that Betty, Miranda (you remember her - the ginger one from Sex And The City), Tom and I are all brace-wearers.

Granted, Ms Hobbs, TC and I decided to ditch our tooth furniture a few years ago, but the painful memories linger on... a bit like toothache.

Wearing a brace, particularly one of those big, clunky metal block jobbies complete with snazzy laggy bands, is an experience that stays with you forever.

While Betty and Miranda are fictional characters who just wear them for comic effect and Tom, well, who knows why he wore them (maybe they were for transmitting messages to the alien master race), I was one of the poor saps who had to wear them for real. Every day. For a year.

Jaws, Metal Mickey, Metallica, the Iron Lady - I've heard them all, although that last one could have been a reference to my hair-do rather than my tooth adornments.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I was made to wear a brace, otherwise I would have started to look like Ken Dodd's long lost sister by now (although that could just be the hair again).

But it was a painful process in more ways than one, and tickled I was not.

Unfortunately, my kids look like they're going the same way. My son seems to have more teeth than the average shark and my daughter has a gap in hers you could drive a bus through (not that that has stopped Madonna and Archbishop Sentamu from rising to the top of their very different professions).

The dentist has already told my lad to brace himself for a brace. He has taken it in his stride, of course, as small boys tend to do ("Nuclear holocaust? Whatever."), but I'm dreading it.

Maybe I don't have to worry though. By the time he's ready to get metalled up, a whole new breed of brace might have been introduced.

The British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry is claiming that a new retainer on its way from the States could change everything.

The Inman Aligner (no, it's not free) is barely visible, apart from a single clear wire, and can be easily slipped in and out of the mouth, so you can go brace-free on special occasions.

It's also cheaper than the average brace - £1,500 compared to the usual £4,000 - and its spring-loaded technology nudges teeth back into line in as little as four to 16 weeks instead of the painfully elongated one to two years of a normal brace.

But, and it's a enormous but (of Cherie Blair proportions), the new, invisible, magic brace can only be used on fully-formed teeth, so it's not suitable for children.

And it can only handle mild to moderate realignment, so if you've got teeth more crooked than a fundraising politician, you're out of the running too.

Darn those dentists - I knew there'd be a catch. So, it's either get your teeth straightened when you're a kid and put up with torrents of playground abuse or leave them until you're an adult and spend your formative years looking like you've been chewing a bag of marbles.

Hang on a minute though - here's some news just in. Apparently the new miracle brace gives you a temporary lisp and can cause excessive drooling.

Oh well, back to the drawing board, lads.