Through Gritted Teeth
When the irresistable force meets the immovable object…
There’s a scene in the 1993 Christmas special of Only Fools and Horses where Del Boy visits the dentist. After Del takes a hearty slurp of the mouth wash provided, the dentist enquires when the last time he visited a dentist. He works out that Del has a regular check up every 16 years. I have to confess that, for a considerable time, I didn’t visit the dentist regularly. I’m hoping it wasn’t quite the extent of Peckham’s finest, but I did lose count.
Fortunately, I happen to have a incredibly good set of gnashers. Although they’re hardly pristine white or perfectly set, they’ve stayed firm, I’ve never lost any and I’ve never even had a filling! I’m not sure if it’s some kind of miracle, the result of some kind of procedure when I was a kid or that I just have good tooth genes.
Speaking of which, before I continue: don’t worry Mum - my dentist visits have increased significantly over the last few years and my teeth are fine!
Never was I in less doubt about the strength of my teeth than when I was rehearsing a pantomime back in September 2011. At this point, I was a regular touring cast member for M&M Productions in Ayr. I forget exactly what number of tours I had done for them at this point, but this was my third time in their version of Beauty & The Beast. While my feelings for the company nowadays are mixed to say the least, I’ll never say their productions were anything less than stellar. They worked us hard and produced results. We always worked hard and rarely received anything less than a rapturous audience response.
On this particular day, rehearsals took place at Ayr Racecourse. With Autumn upon us in a spacious building, the room was particularly cold, which meant energy had to always be up in order to keep warm. On this tour were myself, Gemma, Becky and Ollie, the latter of whom I worked opposite in our dual roles: myself as the villainous Gaston and the quirky Luminaire; Ollie as the hapless sidekick Gormless and the principal lead Beast. One of the opening scenes was full of slapstick humour between Gaston and Gormless, featuring much pretend smacks, falls and facial expressions. I always enjoyed performing these scenes, mostly because as the villain, it was rarely me that was receiving the smacks. Well on this particular day, that was not the case.
For those unfamiliar with his arc, the story of Gaston is that he is an arrogant cad who is besotted with Belle, played exquisitely in this tour by Becky, who was always a joy to work with. Unlike the Disney portrayal, I am far from a hunk of muscly beef, so I portrayed the character with a wimpish, spoiled brat demeanour, using very over-the-top facial expressions. Whilst blocking the scene, I stood behind Ollie while he knelt down ready to spring back to his feet. I liked to over-annunciate certain lines utilising my facial expressions, so in this instance I decided to say a line ending with my front teeth sticking out. Cue Ollie to spring up……
SMACK!
The back of Ollie’s head collides with my teeth. My head is jerked back suddenly as Ollie recoils clutching his own. I grab at my mouth whilst kicking the back of the nearest piece of set (always the back, so as not to damage the wonderful paint job - I’m still a professional). I frantically feel the inside of my mouth to count my teeth. Somehow they’re all still there! Aside from shock and a slight pain in my neck from the ricochet of the impact, I am absolutely fine. The doctors at the local A+E were shocked to hear that my teeth were still in my head.
Oh yeah, you thought this story was just about my teeth, didn't you? Nope, there’s more.
Ollie had to go to A+E.
While Becky, Gemma and director Craig checked over us, Gemma suddenly noticed blood. It wasn’t from my mouth, but rather from the back of Ollie’s head. My teeth has collided with his skull so abruptly, it left a huge cut. Ollie, to his credit, hadn’t even noticed. He was happy to carry on rehearsing! “No” we collectively said. Gemma drove him to a nearby A+E where the doctors fixed him up, including the expected shots for bites. As I wrote before, they were astonished to hear there were no ill effects on me. Somehow I emerged through the whole thing unscathed, and it made for a great story for the other teams in the village pub that evening.
There was one thing that was still bugging me for a little while afterwards though. While myself, Becky and Craig stayed behind to hear news about Ollie and go through whatever parts of the show that we could, I kept feeling something off. The pain was gone, my teeth were solid, but something was definitely…there…I reached to my middle teeth and picked away. For a good few minutes I continued this seemingly pointless endeavour, until suddenly I felt something between my fingernails. I pulled and out it came…a tiny piece…of Ollie’s hair. A singular strand, no more than half a centimetre, of Ollie’s No1 cut hair had wedged itself between my two front teeth during the collision.
This is the main reason I always remember to floss
