Firewalk with me: Drunk burns feet in bonfire promenade

Firewalking is a technique that has been popular for centuries, ever since some fakir with a cart full of placebos to unload first gathered yokels around a coal pit and took the fiery walk in the hopes that they would believe he escaped burned feet because he was wearing the deity’s own socks and that the stinking concoctions he was doling out actually had some medicinal value.

Motivational speaker Tony Robbins was able to use firewalking to much the same effect – in his case unloading tapes and books featuring innumerable hours of him giving you advice that could be boiled down to the Fred Flintstone soundbite “Think big, be big Barney.” It should be noted that Robbins was not suggesting the intervention of a deity, but rather that spending a whole wad of cash to listen to him go on at some retreat in the woods somehow equips one with the mental juice necessary to make such a run without injury. Science-minded spoilsports later put the mysticism surrounding firewalking to rest.

The practice, far less impressive than a demonstration of one’s ability to walk on water would be, has carried on at motivational seminars across the world. (You know you’re at a bad motivational seminar when: a) you are made to pass an orange from under your chin to under that of a coworker without using your hands, and b) you cap off the penultimate day of the retreat with a firewalk.)

As surrounded as it is by an undeserved mystique, firewalking can result in injury, and some basics ground rules must be observed – chief among them that you should do your hotfooted dash across coals, rather than attempting to sprint through a bonfire. A drunk in Wigan England was evidently not a details man.

Drunk at a bonfire with a number of underage companions, the 24-year-old was said to have given in to repeated calls for him to do a “fire walk”. Stripping his shoes and socks off he dashed through the bonfire, burning himself badly. Melted bits of plastic trays that had been used by the environmentally-shocking bunch to build the fire along with rubbish were also stuck to the man’s skin.

Police found him when they went to extinguish the fire and later said after sending him to hospital that the stupidity of the man’s actions “beggared belief”. The upside for his youthful companions, presumably, was that there was one pair of sneakers no longer in use up for grabs following the episode.