I have for a long time felt the world is growing madder by the day and I think I am right. One of John Lennon’s teeth is up for sale and reckoned to fetch £10000! Evidently after its extraction he gave it to his housekeeper to get rid of or pass it on as a souvenir for her daughter. What the hell does someone do with a tooth, even one from a celebrity like Lennon? ‘Hey, guys, come and look at this tooth. Belonged to John Lennon don’t you know? No I don’t want to take it out of its glass case. You can look but not touch. Can you not feel the vibes, man? It’s like John is right here in the room with us. I reckon it was ten thousand quid well spent, worth every penny just to know I have it. Yes, I know ten thousand can by a whole heap of food for starving kids or keep a couple of African families for a year or more but, man, just to have John Lennon’s tooth and to know I am the only one to possess such a memento, that really says something, that’s really cool, man. What do you mean I’m an idiot? You’re just jealous, man. If we had a séance a medium could use that tooth to bring John back from the dead and talk to us.’

Oyez oyez oyez! Update on that miraculous tooth. It has evidently been bought by a Canadian dentist for £19500, virtually double its estimation. £19500 is more than a whole lot of fillings and extractions – that’s any amount of expensive bridge and crown work which only goes to show how rich dentists can be.

And what has the dentist, a Mister Zuk, who once wrote a book on celebrity teeth (My God, what next? People actually buy that kind of thing?) have to say about his purchase? He is going to display it in his surgery and take it around other surgeries and dental schools. As though they could possibly be interested, having never actually seen a real tooth before. ‘My God! Is that what a celebrity tooth looks like? Awesome! I would never have guessed.’

Karen Fairweather from Omega Auctions said of the tooth, ‘It’s rather gruesome, yellow, browny, with a cavity. Mister Zuk said, ‘Some people will think it gross, others will be fascinated by it.’ Fascinated? By a tooth????

So, if John Lennon’s rotten tooth is worth nearly twenty thousand nicker what do you suppose Jesus’ foreskin would fetch at auction today? Wow! A fortune beyond belief. I am led to believe there are a number of churches claiming to hold this important relic but anyone can come up with a little scrap of wrinkled old leather and claim it is the genuine article. After all there is evidently enough pieces of wood taken from the true cross to make a hundred thousand crosses or more and, in the old days, after a public hanging, executioners made a whole heap of money by selling lengths of the rope – enough for a hundred hangings or more. Art for sale has a provenance, what about famous teeth? Who’s to say the Lennon tooth isn’t a fake? Oh, how gullible and how stupid, how gross, Mister Zuk, and how bizarre is the behaviour of some humans. Barnum was absolutely right.