Like the vinyl disc, the Polaroid and the rotary dial Trimphone, I am about to become retro. Not that I’ve awarded myself this label; rather, it’s a friend who’s nominated me – or at least part of me – for this accolade.

“One day,” she said, chatting away gaily, “you’ll become fashionable.

“When everyone else has perfect teeth, you’ll stand out. Youngsters will want a mouth like yours precisely because it isn’t perfect. Just like the Asbo, it’ll become a badge of honour.”

I was touched. For years I’d believed my lack of dental delicacy had alienated me from sophisticated soirees and any chance to brown-nose my way up into the £40,000-a-year salary bracket.

But now I understand that my corrugated canines may actually turn out to be the ticket to my future fortune (after all, it hasn’t done Shane MacGowan of The Pogues any harm).

All I have to do is refuse any but the most basic of dental care and in 10 years, when everyone else is beaming like Julia Roberts, I’ll be gracing the cover of GQ.

And that’s something of a relief, let me tell you.

When I was eight, a family-friendly dentist slipped (“ooops...”) and drilled momentarily through the roof of my mouth (this after two earlier fillings, all without anaesthetic).

So I stayed nervous for 25 years and by then, of course, the damage had already been done.

One tooth had favoured another tooth’s prominent position, and like the planet’s constantly shifting tectonic plates, by the time I hit 30, what had once been Pangaea (the Earth’s first continent) had broken up and separated into an ill-shaped geography so bizarre it could have been alien.

Fortunately, in those days I didn’t smile much (I was working in Middlesbrough). But thanks to a dedicated NHS dentist I saw my mouth re-born, if only partially.

Where once there had been gaps and crevices and razor-like formations worn down by three decades of gnashing (think Grand Canyon), a new structure began to take shape.

Far from perfect, it at least didn’t cause shock and awe over canapes and has stayed that way ever since.

Today, my teeth look puzzling. When I flash them at C-List get-togethers, those with wall-to-wall enamel don’t know whether to point and laugh or donate to some appropriate charity. But they don’t repulse and indeed, like Javier Bardem’s face in the new Bond film Skyfall, they border that curious divide between ‘pretty’ and ‘ugly’.

Understandably then, I’m delighted that my mouth will soon become something of a statement; that squeaky new and gleaming, while good, is never as interesting as old and punished.

The gaps, the cracks, and glaring absences of molars will fast become not so much a poster for corruption but a billboard for a life lived and chewed.

And yeah, I can live with that.