I DON'T remember the exact date but I remember the culprit all right.

I had only bitten into the cheese and pickle on a malted roll sandwich once and it felt like it had bitten me right back. Straight in the tooth.

As I chomped down on the sandwich I had bitten on one of the malt grains sending unimaginable pain shooting round my head.

The sandwich was substituted for pain killers and the pain was gone. But the problem was still there.

Toothache - or indeed any pain - is a warning signal from the brain. It's not there just to make our lives miserable, it's there to spur us into action.

To identify the problem (in this case bad tooth) and thus rectify said problem (with a visit to the dentist). Simple

That was more than 18 months ago, and I still haven't had it seen to.

It would be easy to pretend I've not had the time or the money etc to go to a dentist, but that would be masking a deeper-rooted problem.

The plain tooth (I mean truth) is that I'm scared. Really scared.

I have what is known as dental phobia - an affliction suffered by some 5.5million people in the UK.

Going to the dentist fills me with absolute dread.

The idea of sitting in the waiting room while my erstwhile tormentor drills into the mouth of another poor soul behind the big white door, makes my blood run cold.

The battered copies of Readers' Digest and the bland music eking through the speakers to drown out the constant buzz of the drill, does little to alleviate my anxiety.

I realise I sound pathetic and I realise that in this modern age a trip to the dentists is a relatively painless exercise.

In all my years of going (dragged along by my mother, and I genuinely mean dragged) I have never had a bad experience.

I have not had a drill slip out of my mouth or the wrong tooth taken out, and I have not yet encountered a sadistic character who revels in inflicting my misery.

My phobia - as with all phobias - is based purely on irrational thought. Therefore rational arguments for me actually going to the dentists are merely futile.

Trying telling that to the Long Suffering Marjorie.

She has long extolled the virtues of going to the dentist and takes pleasure in having pain-free teeth.

I too would like pain-free teeth, but it's not that easy.

The last time I went to see a dentist Paul Gascoigne was in his prime, Jason Donovan was in the charts and pint of lager cost a little more than a pound.

It's not a boast I'm particularly proud of, and it's obviously done me more harm than good.

My brain has got bored of sending me those warning signals, and realised it's fighting a losing battle with my phobia, settling instead on a dull, nagging.

Every now and again it sends out a fierce burst of pain, to serve as a reminder that the problem still persists - as if I could forgot - and the fears come flooding back.

I know I will have to go to the dentist's soon, and there are times when it is all I think about.

But just when I think I've conquered my fears and reached for the phone, I slam it down before anyone has answered.

The problem is not going to go away and it would be foolish to think otherwise.

It's time to take a deep breath and get something done.

The time has come to face the tooth!