Smile please! In less than a week it will be Christmas, so how would you like a mouthful of dazzling white teeth like a B-list celebrity's?

Personally, having received just two party invites (which is one more than last year), I wasn't too worried about my lacklustre smile - till I went for my annual dental check-up.

"You've got good teeth ..." said my dentist.

"For my age, you mean?" I said, finishing his sentence.

"For your age," he agreed. "Have you ever considered having them whitened? I think we'd get a very good result."

He described the procedure, which seemed to involve wearing a sort of gum shield for several hours, and the price, which was the equivalent of a week's wages or B&B at The Grand (depending on whether you had bottom and top rows done or just one).

"The whitest teeth I've ever seen belong to my mother," I said. "All she does is soak them in a plastic box of bleach."

I told the dentist I'd think about it.

So I have been thinking about it, particularly since reading that having your teeth professionally whitened can knock ten years off your age.

"Got my Christmas present yet?" I asked The Mother.

"I suppose you'll be getting gift vouchers or book tokens again," she said. "What would you REALLY like?"

"Teeth," I told her. "White teeth. That's what I'd REALLY like."

"It's a lot of money," she said when I told her how much it would cost.

"I know," I said. "But if everybody who normally sends me a gift sent a contribution towards my White Teeth Fund instead, I could look ten years younger in the New Year."

Unfortunately, friends and relatives seem to regard me as The Woman Who Has Everything (don't know what gives them that idea!).

"We never know what to get you," they chorus and I end up with vouchers and book tokens (which is very nice of them and yes, they are useful) but if people asked me what I wanted I'd tell them - and it doesn't stop at dazzling white teeth.

No, I wouldn't mind a little liposuction, all over please. And as I guess I'm too far gone for Botox, how about a full face lift, or maybe just an eye lift to remove the bags under my eyes?

Perhaps someone should introduce Makeover Gift Vouchers for Christmas and birthdays.

"A little something towards your nose job," it would say on the greetings card or "Hoping to see less of you in the New Year" on your voucher for liposuction.

And why not? People are happy to redecorate and refurbish their homes, so why not themselves? Faces, like kitchens and bathrooms, begin to look old and outdated and bottoms, like sofas and armchairs, start to sag and bulge.

"So, where would you start with me then?" said The Mother.

"Now there's a challenge," I replied but truth to tell, I've already begun.

Come Christmas morning she'll find something very appropriate in her stocking. A chiropody voucher to banish her corns and bunions.

Well, you have to start somewhere and in The Mother's case, it's at her feet. Then we'll begin to work our way upwards.

By Christmas 2010 she should be a new woman but I bet she'll still be soaking her teeth in bleach... alongside mine, no doubt.