Coronation Street’s Ian Kelsey opens up on fighting a ‘terrifying’ phobia

The former Corrie Star tells Amy Packer how painful dental treatment left him terrified – and how he has finally overcome his phobia.

Actor Ian Kelsey has been living with crippling dental phobia for decades after bad experiences with a dentist while growing up in York.

The 53 year old, best known for playing Dave Glover in Emmerdale and Vinny Ashford in Coronation Street, says: “He used to drill and do fillings without anaesthetic and I remember him saying, ‘It’ll be over before you know it, just that little of bit pain will be worth not having a numb mouth for the day’, but there was this white hot pain as he drilled which was excruciating.”

“From the chair you could see the towers at the top of York Minster, so I used to focus on spotting visitors walking in between the turrets during these horrendous appointments.”

He never queried what his dentist was doing. “I just thought that was what dentistry was,” says Ian, who now lives in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, with his daughters Layla, 15 and Ivy, 11.

“The thing is, he was this charming gent and he had been our family dentist since I was tiny, so I had no clue that what he was doing wasn’t normal – and my parents never questioned it.”

It wasn’t until Ian joined an amateur dramatics company when he was 18 that anyone suggested that what had been happening wasn’t standard practice.

“One of the other members, Laura, was a dentist and she flagged up to me that perhaps things weren’t being done properly,” says Ian.

“She had spotted that he had drilled a hole in the centre of one of my front teeth and said there was absolutely no reason for him to have done that.”

Interestingly, it was this hole, drilled when Ian was 13, rather than the pain, which had the most long-term impact on him while he was growing up as it affected his confidence.

“The cement he used would stain and very quickly I would get an obvious brown circle there,” he explains.

“I would hide my mouth when I laughed but, despite hating how it looked, I used to be so scared of going back to have it refilled with new white cement.

“After she took a closer look, Laura said it was almost like he was experimenting on me with a new technique. She ended up sorting it out by capping the tooth for me.”

According to statistics from the Oral Health Foundation, almost half of UK adults have a fear of the dentist, with 12 per cent suffering from extreme dental anxiety, known as dentophobia.

For years Ian avoided the dentist unless absolutely necessary. “The sound of a dental drill sent shivers down my spine,” he says.

He was eventually introduced to Dr Bashar Al Naher, founder of the Care Dental Group in Hammersmith, London, by a friend.

Dr Bashar has developed a method called The Enjoyable Dentistry Technique which uses nitrous oxide for conscious sedation to help dental phobics cope with having treatment.

“It was the best dental experience I have ever had,” says Ian of his first visit. “They use a mixture of gas and air and mindfulness, so Dr Bashar helped me visualise a garden and see colours to help me relax while he was treating me. I couldn’t feel anything, not even the initial injections.”

As for Ian’s rogue operator, there’s a chance he may finally have had his comeuppance. “Recently, my brother told me our childhood dentist had been struck off. If that’s true I’m not at all surprised.”

More On

Coronation Street