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On the same day as the historic killing of Libyan despot Colonel Gaddafi, a story about a gigantic slipper could easily have slipped through the net.

Yet the tale of Tom Boddingham and his oversized slipper made headline news in the Metro, in The Daily Mail, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and delighted thousands on Twitter until Polly Curtis from The Guardian looked into the story.

Boddingham had supposedly ordered a pair of slippers in the shape of monster claws, one size 14.5 and one size 13 for his mismatched feet.  According to the reports, Boddingham was amazed when a size 1,450 slipper was delivered to his house.

The oversized slipper, which was shipped from Monster Slipper's factory in China, was blamed on a decimal point being 'lost in translation'. Press-friendly snaps of Boddingham in the seven foot slipper were then published alongside the news articles.

Supporting materials came in the form of a blog post from the company explaining that their factory workers had assumed it was a display model.

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

'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,' Kirk added.

The reporter then asked Danny Jennings, the director of Monster Slippers, whether the story was true and he said that it was. Jennings then explained the anomaly that the customer had been able to order a size 14.5 when on the company's website you can only order a small, medium, large or extra large sizes.

Twitter users then started questioning the identity of Tom Boddingham, who was found to look startlingly like the web manager for Monster Slippers who is called Joseph Jennings.

Curtis then rang back Danny Jennings to ask him to explain the uncanny similarity between Boddingham and Jennings and he was unable to be reached for comment. Joseph Jennings' Twitter account was later removed.

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