Gnasher obsession

I was interested to read in one of the newspapers that my old friend Robert Hardman had had his teeth surgically whitened for an article. Frankly, in all the years I have known him, I have never paid any attention to Robert’s teeth. This is no slight. It is merely that, when I saw the name Hardman, the immediate word association was not ivories. At least not the ones in his mouth, for he does play a mean theme tune on the upright piano.

This indicates one of two things. Either that Robert’s teeth always appeared perfectly acceptable. Or that I am not a teeth person. The truth is a bit (sorry) of both. Robert’s teeth had never sprung to my notice because they seemed perfectly, typically, normal teeth. Second, I am an eyes person, a nose person, occasionally a figure person, but certainly not a teeth person.

In bodily fashion terms, however, teeth constitute the new black. Or rather white. Robert had his teeth lightened because this is apparently the current thing to do if one is a celebrity, especially an American one. Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta Jones and countless other Hollywoodites have all spent a fortune on dental treatment.

This obsession with teeth is something we English find hard to understand. Many of us take pride in not visiting the dentist at all. My younger brother puffed up his chest, on one occasion, and declared that he had not brushed his teeth for five years. Dentalwork, at least pre Martin Amis, was all a bit foreign and suspect, like using stinky male eau de cologne and reeking like a Frenchman.

As far as my own teeth are concerned, I thought them pretty OK as far as British teeth go.