IT WAS the picture we never expected to see, yet there was Victoria Beckham padding her way through Heathrow Airport in a pair of ballet flats!

Yes, FLATS. Had this been Kate Moss, Sienna Miller or Elle Macpherson, no-one would have batted an eyelid at the choice of footwear.

But on Victoria Beckham the shot was paparazzi platinum. After all, this is the woman who loves high heels so much she once said that she couldn’t even concentrate when she wore flat shoes.

“I beyond hate ballerina flats – I can't even walk in them. Unless they're on a ballet dancer, I just don't get it,” she is quoted as saying.

Victoria wears skyscraper stilettos to nip to the shops and Louboutins to take her boys to the zoo. When she was asked to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at Dodgers Baseball stadium in 2007, she even managed to find a pair of trainers that had a heel on them.

Many are attributing Victoria falling flat to her alleged bunions, which are now so famous they have their own Facebook page (just joking).

After all those years in towering heels, Vicky’s little tootsies are said to be a bit battered, with some “friends” claiming that the mother-of-three is now suffering so much pain from these bunions that she has to put ice on her feet and do daily exercises.

Victoria’s bunions have even been mooted as the reason why she often appears to be wearing shoes that are too big for her, as evidenced left.

Having been talked into a size smaller than I usually wear when I bought a similar pair of six-inch high Christian Louboutins – “Victoria Beckham wears zem like zeese, zey look ugly,” the male Parisian shop assistant informed me stabbing at the gap at the back of my shoes – I don’t blame her.

If Buniongate is true, the worst case scenario could see poor old Posh find herself having to undergo a bunionectemy and I’d like to see her get into Antonio Berardi’s bondage boots after one of those.

It is perfectly possible, though, that Mrs B’s choice of footwear for her flight to LA could have nothing at all to do with podiatry problems real or imagined.

By ditching the killer heels, trendsetter Victoria may simply be showing herself to be at the fashion forefront once again.

After watching shoes get higher and higher and ever more outlandish over the past couple of years, fashion insiders are predicting a return to more sensible styles.

Marks and Spencer is currently having a run on “mid-heels” and it’s not like Victoria’s own flat shoes were from Primark or anything, they were, of course, by Mr Louboutin himself.

Just days after Victoria’s appearance, Debenhams were reporting sales of flats going up and calling it the “Beckham boost”.

As a lifelong high-heel devotee myself, I would like to say I won’t convert, but I feel a definite stirring somewhere in my sole.