We think shoes need to come off (Picture: Getty)

Shoes on or shoes off when you’re round someone’s house?

Claudia Winkleman has started a fierce debate it seems, about whether you should take your shoes off when you visit someone.

Team Lifestyle agree it’s situational – house party: shoes on, quiet dinner in: shoes always off. But the internet seems divided.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s 101 with Paul Merton, the presenter admitted she doesn’t like being told to take her shoes off in someone’s house, though she will do it if asked.

‘It’s entirely selfish,’ she admitted ‘[…] I’m footwear and a fringe, there is nothing else.

‘From my nose to my ankle, I have zero interest in. But I am about the boot and looking like I’m wearing a wig. Done.

‘So if they ask me to take my shoes off, then what else is there? I don’t have anything else.’

Claudia also said she wouldn’t ask others to do it. However, she could feel most of the audience disagreed with her.

Though she made the comments back in May, they’ve started to recirculate on Twitter this weekend.

Someone on Claudia’s side said: ‘Can’t stand it. And even more so now that I need in-soles to walk. Surely life’s too short to care that much about carpet?’

Another replied: ‘I have friends who insist on this and they wonder why no one comes to visit’.

A third said: ‘ [I] once went to a Christmas party at someone’s house where everyone stood around drinking champagne in party dresses….and stockings/bare feet. Horrible.’

But on the other side of the fight, one person wrote: ‘Strong disagree. If people want you to take your shoes off in their house that’s understandable and acceptable.’

Others say it’s ‘not sanitary’.

Also, in some cultures, taking shoes off is an act of respect, so there’s got to be some nuance to the argument.

‘The fact that people don’t take their shoes off when they go to someone else’s house is genuinely baffling to me,’ one person said. ‘Might be the biggest culture shock since I moved to the UK.’

Really it’s simple: keep your shoes on or take them off according to the preference of the host. And if you don’t want your toes exposed? Just pack socks.

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Are you a ‘shoes off’ household?