DIY Orthodontics
I had an utter shyster of an Orthodontist between the ages of 13 and 15. He became infamous in the North West of England for juggling four practices and performing loads of painful, unnecessary treatment, making hundreds of thousands of pounds which he spent of skiing holidays. Some of his receptionists/nurses were a special breed of harridan, seemingly having such a loathing of all children it was all they could do to not hit us just for making their tiny, overheated, claustrophobic waiting room untidy. Every trip to his horrible surgery was a rotten ordeal.

At the age of 15, they fined me five pounds for missing an appointment. I decided I'd had enough and that I would never go back, which was a bit daft given that I still had a fixed lower brace. Having managed to remove the inner-cheek stabbing wires, the brackets stayed on their own for a few months until I started fiddling with the back ones. To skip to the end, a friend helped me rip them out with a bicycle spanner.

17 years later I still have fragments of (thankfully tooth-coloured) cement on my teeth and welts in my mouth from the palate brace ... but I never did pay that child-torturing bastard his five pounds. And he was struck off in 1999, so it came up roses in the end.
( The Vomiting Hitchhiker Mephistopheles is such a mouthful in Manhattan, Thu 11 Mar 2010, 16:54, 3 replies)

I got off lightly there
My orthodontist (for the first couple of years anyway) was a nice Irish lady.
( idonthaveafunnynickname Drink-Aware? Sure. I'm aware I want another drink., Thu 11 Mar 2010, 17:23, closed)

this person?
archive.thisistrafford.co.uk/1999/9/16/10570.html
(The Incredible Sulk Finally remembered his password on, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 3:21, closed)

Yeah. That's him
www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/116/116670_shamed_dentist_teaches_law.html

My longest wait for him was two and a half hours. Also, I got beaten up and knocked unconcious when I was 15 by some random nutcase who punched me repeatedly all about the gulliver. The lower fixed and upper palate braces cut the insides of my mouth up pretty badly, and when I went in to get them sorted he just grumbled about having to fix them. His delightful assistant tutted about “young people these days”.
( The Vomiting Hitchhiker Mephistopheles is such a mouthful in Manhattan, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 11:05, closed)