It was a scene that replayed itself in my mind as I stood in the aisle at Coles and surveyed the products in the toothpaste section. Gleaming, Hollywood-style teeth would be good, I thought, baring my teeth in a nearby mirror and causing a grey-haired woman to reverse her trolley and trundle off at high speed to escape the idiot laughing at his own reflection.

Peering more closely at the mirrored image, it occurred to me that while gleaming white teeth would be good, plastic surgery would be even better. I made a mental note to have some secretly done if I ever won Lotto.

I walked back to the toothpaste section and surveyed the tubes of paste and gel on display. All of them promised to have your teeth gleaming like a newly painted picket fence within days. If it was so easy, why were so many people wandering about with teeth which were so decidedly unwhite? A small voice in my brain tried to tell me that it was probably because they weren't all as vain as me, but I successfully ignored it.

Given to a sudden mindset, I recognised the symptoms of a white teeth obsession. The last time I had been seized by a desire to have white teeth, I had spent considerable funds having a special plastic mould created which fitted over my teeth. Into this you squirted a magic gel, placed the moulds over your teeth and sat there while this allegedly whitened your teeth.

I felt ridiculous sitting up in bed staring at the wall waiting for it to work. On one occasion I fell asleep in front of the television set and woke up gasping for breath. I thought I was having a heart attack. Instead, I was choking on the plastic mould which had lodged in my throat.

Each morning I'd struggle across to the mirror and take a look. Nothing. If they were getting whiter they were doing it slowly. I guessed that whatever whitening was going on overnight was being balanced by the odd curry and cup of coffee consumed during the day.

I have known some peculiar dentists. There was one who spent most of his time flirting with his nurse and trying not to look down the front of her uniform. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that. Certainly, she didn't seem to mind but this distraction caused him to perform root treatment on my father which went horribly wrong. He ended up with a face the size of a watermelon. He looked like the Elephant Man for almost a week and eventually had to undergo surgery to have the infection resolved.

I'd been holding a tube of whitener as I relived these moments and read the label which promised whiteness which would all but blind. My teeth would be so white I would be able to read by them in the evenings.

So I bought it and went home and that night painted on this white paste and sat up in bed with a book and waited for the correct interval of time to pass. I woke up two hours later with my mouth so dry I thought I'd been eating dirt and my lips covered in a white froth. I looked positively rabid.