British Teeth and Food.

There I am above and those are my choppers; they're not that brilliant but at least they're mine.

I have had work on them some times through necessity and sometimes for cosmetic reasons and for actors dental work is usually tax deductible.

Once when I had no money our union, Equity, paid for some treatment so when other members of Equity who have lapsed ask me what Equity has done for me I tell them about my dental bills.

So the first thing that happens to you when you come to America – well to be more precise Los Angeles – is that people look at your teeth.

You wonder why they do this and then when you put the TV on the late night comedians crack jokes all the time about British teeth and British food. Jay Leno being the number one pain in the arse on both subjects; Jay Leno whose teeth you cannot see and who eats nothing but pizza.

There was a joke about the police identifying murder victims by their teeth x-rays which cannot be done on Britain due to the lack of dentists there; he's about as good as a British dentist; some joke about the British not knowing what tooth floss is. Loads of jokes and if they were funny it might not be so bad.

They laugh at Hugh Grant's teeth which, to me, look okay. They function, they're probably stronger than the average American's teeth but I think one or two at the front kind of touch each other, or are crooked or something equally as silly.

There is a TV show here called The Bachelor where one man has to choose a wife from 25 beautiful model type girls. One of the bachelors was an Englishman, some time ago, who they liked, but before they put him on the show ABC spent $20,000 on his teeth. I don't know if he chose a girl or if he got married but I hope he can still eat nuts.

I was watching Luciano Pavarotti on TV the other night singing duets and he sung 'It's a Man's World' with James Brown. It was absolutely fantastic but I couldn't help noticing James Brown's teeth. They were as white as – I have to say it – the driven snow; and they were all there and perfect and I thought I bet he didn't eat many nuts in his lifetime. The thing is he probably paid many thousands of dollars to get them like that but no matter they didn't look real.

By the way is driven snow whiter than ordinary snow?

I haven't been able to watch too many variety shows on TV here, not proper variety shows, in any case, but I have never seen a man pulling a steam roller with his teeth. I have never heard if such an event either; in Britain it happens all the time and when you see those people close up their teeth are not like James Brown's.

So are English teeth worse than American teeth? Well if you travel to the boonies of America there are some families who only have one tooth between them and that one is full of decay. It's the tooth they share when they're having nuts for tea; the person with the tooth chews the nut then passes it to their relations to suck and swallow. I should imagine it's quite a spectacle.

And what about the food? When I first came here it was as if I'd landed on the island where The Lord of the Flies was set. If you remember it was about a load of boys who were suddenly on an island looking after themselves and making up their own rules and suddenly I'm in America and they are eating a bacon and egg breakfast with syrup poured over it. They also put jam on their toast and eat it at the same time as their bacon and eggs; in other words they are barmy.

It's a great treat when you get here with the pizzas – has to be a New York or a Chicago pizza - their In-n-Out burgers and the rest of the novelty foods, which are usually full of fructose corn syrup, but when you've had your fill of the fillet Mignon steaks and the rest of the stuff you long for a decent leg of lamb with mint sauce and the trimmings.

Maybe a sandwich of Marmite – which I never ate in Britain - or some cheese. Any cheese!! All the cheese here is processed. Sometimes the Brie or the Camembert cheeses are okay as they have to be processed but by and large the quality of cheese, milk, fresh cream or anything dairy is really piss poor.

So the jokes about British food as well as the ones about British teeth fall on deaf ears in this house and what am I cooking for dinner tonight: liver and onions with bacon and mashed potatoes – yum yum.