Keeper of the Flame

Proudly showing off her smoke-tinted fingers (“I’m like a mechanic!”), the otherwise flawless Naomi Lynch is keen to talk about the show that’s due to take her from Dublin to Sydney to Hong Kong, over the next five months. “It’s absolutely nuts,” she beams, “it’s one of the most dangerous stunt shows you’ll ever see – it’s really risky. We’ve got the world’s first indoor loop, we’ve got two flaming rally cars that drive in sequence while on fire, and we’ve got over 100 sequences. We even have a Suzuki Swift that does a donut on a four metre high platform!”

Under the alias of Firechild, Lynch – sister of Boyzone’s Shane and the twins Edele and Keavy of B*Witched – has been eating, breathing and living fire for four years now (and doing the odd bit of angle-grinding and stilt walking to boot), but the 26-year-old says that Top Gear Live will be a whole new ball game. “I’ve done loads of tours before as a dancer, I’ve done Bollywood movies and I’ve done tours for the army entertaining the troops – but this is the biggest show in terms of audience. We’ve had audiences of 6,000 people four times a day!
“I’m the ultimate thrill seeker,” she adds. “I love cars, I love speed, I love anything to do with adrenaline so this is my ideal job. These rally cars are flying within inches of me and I just stand there swinging fire, it’s brilliant! I got bored with just dancing, I wanted to add a little bit of danger, so I just started playing with fire.”
Excuse my ignorance, Ms. Lynch, but how does one “just start playing with fire”?
“You teach yourself,” she shrugs. ”A friend of mine could fire-breathe. He came down to London and we went to my brother’s garage one day. He taught me what fuels to use, what not to do... if you inhale while you’re doing it your lungs will blow up and you’ll die, you know, things like that (laughs).”
Apart from a few singed eyebrows, Lynch assures me that there’s been no major accidents to date. Now that she’s performing in the most testosterone-fuelled show on earth, how does she handle Clarkson and co? “Ah, they’re brilliant,” she enthuses, “really on the ball. I drive an Aston Martin in the show, so they always give me a little wink when I’m in the car!”
For a family steeped in showbiz, Naomi notes that the Lynch family are still remarkably close. She shared the pain, when her brother’s band mate Stephen Gately died recently. “I remember him from the dancing world when he was just a kid and he really was such a sweet guy. When I say ‘was’ I can’t even contemplate that it’s not ‘is’. It’s still such a shock. The world definitely lost a star.”
Though she’s been involved in several groups over the last decade (see youtube for evidence of late ‘90s pop-rap duo Buffalo G), Lynch is not planning to return to singing. “I feel like I’ve finally found my niche with the fire performance,” she says. “It’s four years on and I still love it. When I first picked up the fire stuff, I had a band and I’d written an album’s worth of tracks. I still have them and I’m not saying never and I do love to sing. But for I’ve got my niche and I’m really busy. I want to see Firechild become the Dita Von Teese of the fire world!”