The Amazing Singing Dentists were a fabulously silly musically terrific group that annoyingly never got the attention it deserved. I suppose the whole pretend dentist thing needed some hard slog at Edinburgh, 
but having done the Festival seven times and always hated it, as I started off in a revue that was Perrier runner up and then it was all downhill every year after that, I wanted just to play gigs in London, which we did. And at Henley where we were a great success. We even did ‘Britain’s Got Talent’! More about that further down. But we didn’t ever quite get the following required. The band was great tho. It was this line up that made the album ‘Dentura Highway’. Here’s ‘Not in a Sexual Way’.
Jelled!
The band featured the always excellent Mal Darwen on guitar, and the superb duo of Abi Hercules on vocal and Cathy Cogle on the other vocal. They really jelled wonderfully. The
sound was lovely. There was a lot of discussion on whether the band should just be a musical one with no comedy inserts, which ultimately got in the way of the act and led to the girls leaving, but considering everyone was doing other jobs it was a feat to get it all as good as it was. The album is terrific though I say so myself with the harmonies and vocals top notch. It’s funny too!
Britain’s Got Talent
We got Britain’s Got Talent completely wrong, singing ‘Trust me I’m a Dentist’ with it’s original guitar intro which gave Simon Cowell the time to press his button so a big X appeared over the stage, even before we’d started singing. He actually said ‘Singing Dentists? I give up’. The audience all see the X and start yelling ‘f*ck off’. We should have done an acapella song and come on singing it so they’d all see how good we were. I also learnt afterwards that our ‘showbiz’ past had been spotted early on – the assistant to the producer was a friend of a friend and I’d met her a couple of times. She had queried what 
were we doing there apparently and we were actually kept to last! We were forced to keep standing by the stage door of the Hackney Empire until I wandered off into a ‘green room’ and insisted we sit down despite being told we couldn’t go in there as it wasn’t for us! I didn’t answer the human interest questions properly either. I was asked by a youthful researcher what I’d do with the £100,000 if we won and I said I’d create a whole series of inflatable teeth that would burst and shower pieces of paper all over London saying ‘The Singing Dentists’. When asked who I’d like to play me in a film I said ‘Didier Drogba’ and when asked what I would do if I met the Queen I said I’d make her a ‘crown’ as I was a dentist.
Humble
Clearly we were supposed to be humble about it all and go on about it ‘changing our lives’. Anyway once on stage and questioned by the panel, we were all a bit rubbish at telling the truth. I mean we couldn’t say we were dentists as they’d find out we were lying and ban us so we all gave a sort of version of what we did. I said I was a songwriter and Cathy said she was a teacher and Abi said she did Childline. Mal said he worked for a computer firm. Which was true but not what we really did. In reality of course we were all performers. Cathy was about to do ‘Sound of Music’, Abi was a jobbing actress and Mal a professional guitarist. What we said was all true but not the human interest stuff we should have come up with, and it all lacked a bit of conviction. Cowell was into us right from the start saying he couldn’t see how it was funny. Nothing I said convinced him otherwise.
Amanda Holden and Simon Cowell
Amanda Holden told us to start and I couldn’t hear her as the sound was so bad. Mal didn’t hear her either and I had to tell him to start. Then Cowell pressed his button, we did a couple of ‘Trust me’s’ and that was that. We lasted 14 seconds before Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan gave us the elbow and pressed their buttons. Piers said annoyingly ‘Like going to the dentist. Extremely painful.’ We trooped off into empty wings. What happens next is that you are told to go somewhere backstage
to be interviewed to explain your uselessness. It’s humiliation time! And it’s out on ITV2! I reasoned that at least we’d be seen by a few thousand on that channel. The bloke just on before us was in floods of tears as to how he was a grocer and he thought he’d be able to give up being a grocer and become a stand up comedian but now his dream was dashed.
Humiliated
He’d lasted 60 seconds before the buzzers. Apparently this is part of the humiliation, being reminded of the brief length of time before you’re buzzed off! Just as we were about to start the ‘humiliation’ interview, the interviewer said ‘here hang on a moment I know you don’t I?’ And indeed I had voiced a koala on ‘Ministry of Mirth’, a kiddies show that he had presented. Anyway the cameras started rolling and he asked me ’14 seconds! What happened?’ And I replied ‘They didn’t get it! Never mind. Here’s a song about a dilemma that most dentists have’ and we sang ‘When I look in your mouth, I want to put my tongue in’! ‘You’re rather good’ he said! ‘Thanks!’ we replied all rather pleased how well that had gone. When I watched the ITV2 programme the following week there was not a sausage of a suspicion of a dicky bird of us to be seen anywhere.We had been expunged!
Here are two songs at Liberties in Camden. ‘Trust me I’m a dentist’ and ‘Teeth of an Angel’. It’s a hot one!
Here’s one of the very first gigs at the Hen and Chickens
This is ‘Floss Me’ live at the Ginglik
This is a ‘Teeth of an Angel’ vid made by the excellent animator and good friend Ian Sachs with pics. It’s a bit slow tho!