Can taping your toes together ease high heel pain?

I am a total sucker for any old internet cod science, if it promises pain-free high heel wearing. I have tried gel-injected tights and nude footsie socks. I have read reams of advice on heel height to surface area ratio. I have never had Botox injected into my soles, but if you are offering, I’m in.

So I am pretty excited about today’s high level investigative journalism assignment. I am to road test not just any old cod science, but cod science as endorsed by Marie Helvin. Helvin is 62 and yet from what I can see in the party pages she goes out to standy-aroundy cocktail parties night after night, and always looks as if she’s having an awesome time and not like her feet hurt and she’s wondering if she’s got time to get home for Wolf Hall if she orders an Uber right away.

View image in fullscreen

Helvin recommends taping together the third and fourth toes of each foot. (Count from the big toe outwards.) This, apparently, takes the pressure off the ball of your foot. You can do it with sticky tape at a pinch, but I am not keen on the idea of weird ground level sound effects when I walk. And as it happens, we have, glamorously, a roll of self-sticking bandage tape on the kitchen shelf, from when my husband broke a finger playing football. So I tape up, indulging in a brief fantasy in which I am Sylvie Guillem backstage at Covent Garden.

There is another reason I am excited about this experiment. I have a pair of Dior shoes, which I bought in Bicester Village, which are beautiful and were a triumphant bargain, or would have been had they actually fitted me. As it is they are a half size too small. But they are fabric, and I am an eternal optimist, and so I am convinced they will stretch. The heels are 80mm high, which to me is an ideal height – high enough to look like a real heel, but infinitely more manageable than 100mm.

View image in fullscreen

I catch the Victoria Line to Oxford Circus. Standing on the tube, walking up the escalator, walking through Soho to my first meeting: all fine. Forty five minutes sitting down, then a walk across Mayfair to Dover St: still no pain. Half an hour later, walking to Green Park tube, the shoes are starting to rub my heels, but the balls of my feet are still fine. (Belatedly, I remember Helvin’s other tip, for new shoes: wear them around the house to work out where they rub, then apply fabric plasters to the sore spots of your feet, then soak your feet briefly in water, and then walk around the house in the shoes a bit more – the expanded, wet plaster will soften and stretch the shoe in the crucial places.)

The toe tape definitely helps. It seems to work by altering your balance and, if I’m not mistaken, slightly numbing your feet. It gives you about another mile – which is worth having. It is not, however, a magic cure. By the time I’ve walked the length of St Pancras station, my feet are definitely hurting. Luckily, I long ago discovered the real magic cure for sore feet, and it’s in my bag. I find a discreet bench, and change into my Air Max. Marie, what can I say? I tried.