Dentist mine and Dexter ours.

I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO BE a dentist and my dentist has always wanted to write comedy. He’s one of the funniest people I know. I keep telling him he should do a one-man show called Dental As Anything. He wants to call it Game On Molar.

Our conversations generally begin with respectable topics such as kids, television and current affairs, then pretty rapidly disintegrate into dental erotica, nasally delivered erectile dysfunction solutions and anal ozone (don’t ask).

Dr Dentist was doing something in my mouth the other day. (I don’t know what it was but it cost the earth, I don’t look any different and the only reason I had it done was because he assured me that if I didn’t it would cost even more later, that is if I hadn’t died of teeth disease first.) Anyway, after saying “This won’t hurt a bit,” he turned to his assistant and said, “Can you turn the radio up?”

Can you believe that?

So when he said “Big mouth”, I said “Tiny penis”. That shut him up. I’m pretty sure he’s qualified. In something.

At one point he was performing some medieval torture on me and I said, “Have you ever done this before?” To which he responded “Once. On a dead guy.” I don’t know why I go either. I think it’s because he gives me a sticker.

So my number two thing I’d like to be is a blood-splatter analyst and part-time serial killer. Which is probably why I like Dexter.

People constantly buttonhole me at school functions, meetings with my parole officer and swingers’ nights and tell me that I should watch some particular television show or other. If they ever bothered to read this column, they’d know I loathe television. Most of the time I’d rather drill a hole in my head than flick on the tube. And when I’m a dentist I’ll be able to.

Dexter was one of the many shows that people kept mentioning to me, only to then find it was “on cable”. It was a bit like finding out something that I really wanted to buy in the ’80s was from “overseas”. Was on cable. Now on Network Ten. Seriously.

So Dexter (played by Michael C. Hall, or as most people refer to him, the gay funeral director fromSix Feet Under) works for the cops as a blood-splatter analyst by day and kills people as a hobby. I know what you’re thinking, sounds like Tony Abbott’s dream job.

Sure it’s got your good actoring, your fine writering and some top little stories propelling the narrative along, but what really floats my boat is the quirkiness of it. The weirdness.

Dexter is very unhingeing as a character. It’s so refreshing not to have the world evenly divided into good guys and bad guys. The world isn’t polarised. It’s messy and unpredictable.

And if we were out in the world and not glued to the couch we’d be reminded of that. Dexter is good at his job, great brother, very caring. Sure, he’s a sociopath but he’s a really sweet guy.

A bit like my dentist.

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