Michael Flatley’s feet used to move so fast, they tapped 35 times a second and required a £25m insurance policy on his legs. He hasn’t danced for nearly 10 years – not even in his own quiet way any more, he says – but the “feet of flames” that bewitched 60 million over more than four decades must now be in one hell of a state.
We are sitting at a table in the emptied breakfast room of the InterContinental hotel in Dublin when Flatley whips his right foot out on to the seat beside me: size eight, small and sockless in unflashy black sneakers. If my feet had put me on the Sunday Times Rich List, I say, I’d dress them in silk socks and stroke them each night to thank them. “Well, listen,” he says. “I don’t really give any of that any thought. To be honest, I don’t think much about me.”
