The UV toothbrush cleaning system by Lloydspharmacy is kind of like religion. It could all be a load of crap, but you have to rely on faith and faith alone for it to work. It says on the cover that 'A British study found 100 million germs on a single toothbrush' which sounds incredibly scary and horrible- if you're a hypochondriac. In my opinion, if we were going to get that paranoid about germs, there'd be a hundred inventions like this covering nearly everything we do. There are about 2,561,580 germs on your keyboard. There are about 40,000 germs on a coin. There are millions of bacteria in your mouth (there goes kissing) and tons of bacteria in that Yakult drink- okay maybe that's the good kind, but you see my point.

Ramble over, I grabbed my beautiful pink toothbrush ( it must be a manual one, not electronic) and set up the cleaning system. It's easy enough to set up, all you have to do is put in the plug.
The design is nice and simple too, looking remarkably similar to a free standing sun bed. It even glows blue inside when you turn it on. Pretty futuristic stuff. It can hold up to 4 toothbrushes at a time in case you're feeling superdirty and takes only 8 minutes for a full cleaning cycle. So I sat and waited while my poor toothbrush was getting zapped by ultraviolet rays in the name of good hygiene.

When the blue UV light switched off, I opened the door and expected a sparkling ray of light to beam out like the entrance to heaven but no. It just looked like my toothbrush. I even took the machine out of its holding tray expecting some sort of evidence, but nothing.

Unfortunately, the only thing I can comment that I noticed a change in was the smell. My toothbrush smelt like it was dragged through toxic cleaning fluid. So now I am more scared to put it in my mouth then when it was apparently 'infested' with germs.

Save yourself the 8 minutes waiting time and just clean your toothbrush with good old fashioned water.

The UV Toothbrush Cleaning System costs £31.99 and is available from www.lloydspharmacy.com.