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A question we are often asked but have never answered is why there are pairs of shoes dangling from telegraph wires.
If this question has always plagued you, I refer you to this short film The Mystery of Flying Kicks, in which several theories are posited, though a definitive answer remains elusive. Sometimes you’ve just got to accept you’ll never know why the shoes are on the damn wires, but I realise this is a bitter milkshake to swallow.
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Tags: mysteries, shoes, telegraph wires
Answer Me This! Podcast 
April 10, 2015 at 7:35 pm |
Hi,
I’ve just discovered your podcast after listening to Olly on LBC and then googling him.
I have five children under 25 who gave me an insight into the shoes on the wire. It may have been inspired by the De Niro movie but nowadays It is a tactic of bullies. They take the shoes off the victim, tie the laces and toss them at the wire until they hang there. This usually happens on the way to school so the victim sees them every school day, possibly for years.
April 7, 2015 at 1:24 pm |
I’ve not watched the whole of that clip, but the first time I saw this was in a film: ‘Wag the Dog’ with Hoffman and De Niro – from 1993. It’s a great film, check it out, and if there are no other pre-1993 shoes on wires, then it might have started with this.