If you set aside the fall of Sirte and the bailiffs moving into Dale Farm, this might be a contender for the picture story of the day (see above).

Tom Boddingham ordered a pair of slippers in the shape of monster claws, one size 14.5 and one size 13 for his mismatched feet from a company called Monster Slippers. But a decimal point apparently got "lost in translation" ending up with the arrival from the company's factory in China of a seven foot slipper.

The company has blogged about the story here explaining that their factory boss had assumed it was a display model.

Our lovely Mr Xie said he figured it was a sample for a shop window display, so he thought nothing of it being so gigantic.



The Times, Telegraph, Mirror, Daily Mail and numerous others reported it.

We thought it was a bit fishy as did several people on Twitter. One of the Guardian's web editors @JonathanHaynes tweeted:

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest this Daily Mail story is utter bollocks. PR stunt written all over it yfrog.com/mfmdurhj

Could this really happen? How did the order go wrong? Why did the factory ship it without apparently charging extra for shipping and materials? Why only one slipper? At the risk of spoiling a brilliant story rapidly gathering admirers on Twitter, we decided to find out.

I asked the PR firm whether it was true and was put onto Palamedes PR's director, John Kirk, who told me:



We're given the information from the client. We represent monster slippers. What we're doing is always looking at various newsworthy ways of promoting them. A lot of time goes into speaking to customers and speaking to them as well. As with all PR agencies the ideas tend to come from the client. Just like with any half decent quirky story, I'm not sure all of them stack up that's the fun of human kind. As far as we know it's true.

Hmmm. When I asked whether he could guarantee that it is true, he said he wouldn't put his neck on the line.

It's not our company. I would never put my neck on the line but if they are telling us it is, that's good enough for me.

Asked for a copy of the press release, Kirk directed me to Caters news agency, which is currently advertising stories including the "Gorillas eating carrots", the "amazing legless breakdancer" and the story of the woman "pregnant through sexomnia".

So I asked Danny Jennings, the director of Monster Slippers, whether ithe story is true and he said, absolutely, yes. He explained the fact that you can only order a small, medium, large or extra large on their website rather than a size 14.5 saying that this was a special order, which came in a shipment from China. I asked whether they paid extra for shipping or materials and he told me:

Have you ever been to China? Lots gets lost in communications. This was one of those situations.

I wondered about Tom Boddingham, the customer mentioned in the story, then I saw this tweet from @william_summers:

Giant slipper story exposed: Doesn't "Tom Boddingham" (http://t.co/LpJNKY4p) look like @mrjoejennings, web mgr for Monster Slippers? #Prscam

"Tom" (see picture above) does indeed look identical to @mrjoejennings, who lists himself as a "Part-Time Online Retail Manager".

His profile on the Monster Slipper website is here.

I have put in a call to Danny Jennings to ask him to explain the uncanny similarity between "Tom Boddingham" and Joseph Jennings (are the two Jennings in fact related?), but he's not answering his phone at the moment.

You can listen to "Tom" telling BBC London all about it here.

In the meantime, I'd like to recommend this book to all at Monster Slippers, Palamedes PR and perhaps a few national newspaper as well.

Update

Shortly before launching this blog I called Danny Jennings to ask him about Joe Jennings and his remarkable similarity to Tom Boddingham. I left a message on his answering machine letting him know what we were intending to write. I've not had a response yet, but it's just been pointed out to me that Joe's Jennings' Twitter account is no longer available. Luckily we have this screengrab of his picture in the bank.

Photograph: Screengrab

The Telegraph has removed its original report and replaced it with this one headlined Monster slipper 'revealed as elaborate PR stunt' which references this blog for questioning the veracity of the story.