Dentures — a subject to get your teeth into

PAV’S PATCH: I’M about to make a strange confession. Just lately, I’ve been thinking about false teeth. I realise it’s an odd thing to do but there you go. You have to make the long, summer evenings pass somehow.

Although I hardly have what might be termed a Hollywood smile I do have virtually all my own teeth. I’ve reached 53 with a couple of caps but no actual dentures. So what’s it like if you have some?

It’s a long time since I snogged anyone — after all I was married for many years — but can you do such juvenile things if you have false teeth? Isn’t there a chance they might come out while doing some dental vacuuming, if you get my drift.

I know for a fact that odd things can happen because on one famous occasion my late father laughed so much at Benny Hill, or something similar, that his bottom set flew out.

There is a legend that they skidded across the table and bit my mother, but I think she made that up. However, she never let the poor man forget the incident.

Just to go off on to a related subject, mother also refused to let th’owd chap forget the time she asked him for some Alka Seltzer.

As a loving husband, he dutifully prepared a fizzing glass which she prepared to drink. Fortunately, just in time, she realised the water was pink not clear. Dad had reached for the wrong tube and stuck in a Steradent tablet by mistake.

In my postman days, I had cause to visit a colleague whose false teeth were on a tuffet by the telly as we talked. To put this in context, at his funeral his grand-daughters read a poem which explained that they loved him despite his habit of breaking wind while watching television. The lady vicar’s face was a picture as she mumbled: “That was lovely.”

But the most remarkable incident concerns a cricketing acquaintance. To spare his blushes I’ll call him TG.

TG was a fearsome bowler who loved the Central Lancashire League back in the 1980s. Facing Ezra Mosley he relied on his hair to be his helmet and 20 Park Drive as his thigh pad. Then, one day, he wasn’t in the team.

“What’s happened?,” I asked. TG gave me a weak smile while his wife replied: “He took his teeth out while he had a nap and the dog’s chewed them up.” Test Match Special were very impressed.

Finally, what’s French for a set of dentures? Aperitif. And American for a pile of dentures? Massachusetts.