IN a rare moment of wonderment, this week I found myself captivated by the display of toothbrushes in Darlington's Boots.

In fact, the moment grew into a full half-hour as I stood there caught by the agony of choice.

Normally, I would just chuck the cheapest toothbrush unthinkingly into the trolley during the supermarket dash. But, following this week's revelation, it is clear that my slapdash approach to toothbrushery has caused me to miss out on a huge range of oral hygiene experiences.

To make up for lost time, from the 40 or 50 different types of toothbrushes arrayed before me, I eventually chose the top of the range model. It cost nearly a fiver and is a CrossAction VitalizerTM with CrissCross bristles "which are positioned in opposing directions and are designed to flex and then straighten, actively penetrating between the teeth". Then there's "the multi-section elevated Power Tip bristles", plus there's special must-buy feature of the Soft Gum Stimulators.

It is an extraordinary piece of toothbrush engineering. The four kinds of bristles point dynamically in different directions and are as excitingly coloured as a child's toy. On the sides, the Soft Gum Stimulators are made of a peculiar plastic that is like an early astroturf artificial football pitch. I'm not quite sure what they are supposed to get my gums doing - I don't really want my gums to be stimulated into taking up medieval battle re-enactments as a weekend hobby - but so far they've been stimulated into bleeding quite profusely after each brushing.

The handle is a magnificent piece of macho ergonomic design. It fits perfectly into the hand and has all sorts of car tyre tracks squealing dramatically across it. This is a handle that says that this toothbrush really packs a punch.

For true toothbrush connoisseurs, the handle is available in four translucent colours: aqua, indigo, raspberry and chartreuse. I think mine is aqua, but as I don't know what colour chartreuse is, I'm not sure.

This brush is made by an American company which claims to have made the first toothbrush to go to the moon - an Oral-B brush was aboard Apollo 11 and, apparently, just a minute before he stepped onto the moon in 1969, Neil Armstrong brushed his teeth with it.

Such toothbrush technology is a far cry from the Babylonians who, 3,500 years before the birth of Christ, chewed aromatic sticks so that one end was soft and brush-like and the other was hard and pointy.

The Europeans put a salt solution onto a rag which they rubbed around their teeth with a stick until, in 1780, William Addis of Clerkenwell, London, had a dead cow on his hands. He whittled the thighbone into a handle and attached some hairs from the cow's tail, and so the modern toothbrush was born.

He soon found that wild boar bristles were even better, particularly if they were plucked from the boar's neck and especially if the boar came from somewhere cold like Siberia.

Anyway, next week I'm thinking of returning to the toothbrush aisle and buying a Tongue Cleaner which "comfortably scrapes away bacterial build-up". Until seeing this device, I was blissfully unaware that my tongue was dirty, but now I'm losing sleep over all the bacteria that are building up in there and need to be sluiced out.