Russelling up the footwork

Dusk, on a Friday evening in Donnybrook village and most of the workers are heading home, already loosening their ties and letting down their hair with a bite to eat, an after-work drink or cranking the music up and getting ready to put on the ritz, but not Mary Moore.
Mary was doing a different kind of footwork. Ms Moore was busy, still working, surrounded by boxes in preparation to open her new business Donnybrook Footmechanics, a sports podiatry clinic with a particular interest in female athletes and active woman that specialises in 3D motion gait analysis for runners of all levels, and fitting custom foot orthotics for shoes, sandals and slippers, as well as, maybe most importantly for tricky feet that need support – stylish footwear.
The countdown was on and she was hard at work. But if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed then Mohammed must go the mountain and Ms Moore was about to have a very unexpected showbiz night, that was more tinsel town than green glitter, with a bona fide Hollywood star. She was busy unpacking shoe boxes from her car just near Kiely’s pub and spotted a gang “of four huge guys having a smoke outside.”
“You know when you see someone and you think, ‘I know him,’ well that’s what happened. I was unpacking boxes and I looked up and saw this man and was ‘I know that man’ and then I realised, I do know that man,” she emphasised, laughing, “It’s Russell Crowe. And I looked at him and was ‘Ok Russell Crowe.’ My first instinct was to go ‘Ah well’ that’s nice and simply continue about my business but then he turned to me and said, ‘Do you want a hand?’ And they all jumped up and started carrying the boxes and helping me.”
She said he was “extremely chivalrous and really down to Earth. A really nice guy.” Russell was in town with his band Indoor Garden Party to make an appearance on RTÉ’s The Late Late Show. “They were all in very high spirits, a real party atmosphere on a Friday night in Dublin, very, very funny and really enjoying themselves. There was a great atmosphere around them.”
Ms Moore said he was “completely different” than the less than flattering media portrayals of him that paint him as grumpy or gruff. “He couldn’t have been nicer. He was an absolute gentleman, very gallant and they were all in great form.”
After carrying the boxes “I asked him for a photo and he said, ‘Better still, let’s take a selfie,’ and made sure we got a great shot.”
Mary Moore’s studio is Donnybrook Footmechanics 26a Donnybrook Rd and can be found online at www.donnybrookfootmechanics.ie Ph 015637596 or Follow her on Twitter @marymoorepod and Russell Crowe @russellcrowe