John Freeman, 63, who is a former headmaster went out to dine with his wife and wanted to remove a piece of meat stuck in his tooth when he called for a toothpick.

The waiter at the Macdonald Portal Golf and Spa Hotel in Cheshire, however, refused to give him the toothpick and told him that it was a ‘potentially dangerous’ implement so he could not have it.

Freeman then went ahead to complain to the manager and told him, “I told the manager there were 14 very dangerous metal forks on my table that had been unsupervised for at least two hours.”

The manager politely agreed to this and responded that what he was saying was correct but the waiter was simply following head office directives that toothpicks are potentially dangerous.

The spokesperson for the Macdonald Hotels chain, later, told NewsCore that there was not much truth to ‘Freeman’s account’ of the story.

She told that no ban has been imposed by the hotel owners on providing toothpicks in Macdonald Hotels and there were simply no toothpicks available that night in the Hotel.