It’s been a shoo-in of a week for Olympic swimming star Rebecca Adlington, or rather a Choo-in as the nation’s redtops queued up to buy the Mansfield mermaid her dream high heels.

The Mirror had teased her parents that they had to pay up on a bet of £400 Jimmy Choo shoes as soon as Rebecca won her first gold medal in the 400-metre freestyle, so the paper felt it had to put its own money where its mouth was by buying her a pair too, only upping the price to £450.

But a girl can never have too many pairs of “Swimmy Choos”, which is just as well as the not-to-be-outdone Sun also splashed out on a pair of “gold designer high heels”, priced at, yes, you guessed it, £465. The cheapskates at the Mirror must have been gutted when it wasn’t Rebecca but her sister Chloe who wore its choice of stilettos on the open-topped bus that took them through the streets of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. Just whose Choos the golden girl chose to wear on the bus we may never know, even if a fourth pair, donated by the town mayor, were perhaps the most appropriate, being made from watersnake skin. Funnily enough, those were the only ones mentioned by the Express and the Mail.

Given that Rebecca had her pick of the Choos, the new line of footwear suggested by her mother Kay may only be a short step away: “If they made designer flippers, she’d be inheaven,” Kay told the Mirror.

Elsewhere, someone who was also looking like a fish out of water – but in a rather different sense – was Helena Bonham Carter, who continued the shoddy leitmotif with a pair of heels that looked better suited to the high jump.

They are somewhat cheaper than the Choos, at £100 or so a pair with custom-fitting included in the price, but as they can only be bought in the US, the air ticket does add a bit to the cost.

Available not just in the shoe style favoured by Bonham Carter but also as trainers and knee-high boots, the Z-Coil Mary Janes come with a spring heel supported by a 3in steel coil.

Designed to give height with comfort, they’re not just for girls, other fans being Dustin Hoffman and Matt Damon. Could be just the thing for Gordon Brown if he’s still looking for that Beijing Bounce.

Stats of the week

Mavis Burton-Pye is suing a hospital in Gorleston, Norfolk, where her husband Leslie probably contracted the superbug C difficile, which led to his death. New figures show that deaths involving the infection have more than doubled in two years, up from 3,757 in 2005 to 8,324 in 2007.

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