We have a friend who used to be a dentist who fondly referred to his job as "working in the sewers". We never knew whether to feel sorrier for him or his patients, but at least he never left any of his equipment behind while he was down there...
Just when you thought we lived in an age when going to the dentist wasn't quite as bad as little Dustin Hoffman made out in Marathon Man along comes a fake dentist story that will help keep your mouth clamped shut for a while yet.
Bogus dentist Omid Amidi-Mazaheri was jailed for two years back in March, but now health authorities are worried that infection control procedures may have been a tad lax for those unfortunate enough to have had his fingers in their mouths. Blood tests are being arranged over worries about HIV and hepatitis.
Amidi-Mazaheri (and his girlfriend - qualified dentist Mogjan Azari) managed to see almost 600 patients and pocket around £120,000 before being rumbled. We'd rather chew tinfoil than dwell on this for too long:
He drilled out cavities without a local anaesthetic then installed expensive fillings that crumbled within days. On one of the rare occasions when he did give an injection, he dropped a piece of equipment down the patient's throat.
