Danny Lynch
Fire-eater and sword-swallower known as ‘The Great Stromboli’ who appeared in The Elephant Man
DANNY LYNCH, “The Great Stromboli”, who has died at the age of 92, was a fire-eater, swordswallower, magician and sideshow entrepreneur. He also had a distinguished war record that earned him a medal from the Russian government.
Daniel Cornelius Lynch was born at Rosyth, near Dunfermline on the Firth of Forth, on July 7 1926, one of four children of a carpenter. He joined the Navy at 15 and served on a destroyer protecting the Arctic convoys of merchant ships sailing between Scotland and Murmansk. In 2017 he was presented with the Ushakov Medal by the Russian Ambassador to London along with 72 other convoy veterans.
Leaving the Navy in 1946 with the rank of Chief Petty Officer and the award of a British Empire Medal, Lynch later served with the Australian Marine Service, honing his show business talents while serving throughout the Far East.
Long having a fascination with magic, Lynch would entertain fellow crew members on long voyages, trying his hand at sword-swallowing and fire-eating. One day, as he was performing his fire-eating act as his ship sailed past the volcanic island of Stromboli, off the coast of Sicily, his shipmates reckoned that he could blow his fire higher than the volcano.
So “The Great Stromboli” was born, and with the old-school variety circuit then still flourishing, acts such as his were guaranteed a living, though he had a short stint selling insurance before the bright lights beckoned full-time.
On tour in 1958 he met a nurse, Sylvia Wilde, who became both his wife and stage assistant. Soon a staple summer-season support act, the couple regularly appeared alongside David Nixon, the Black and White Minstrels and Ken Dodd. In 1967 they represented the UK at Expo 67 in Montreal.
During the 1970s, Lynch held the Guinness world record for continuously blowing 136 flames from his mouth. He claimed to have broken his own record with 214, but it went unrecorded, reportedly to discourage those who might attempt to go for their own record.
For many years the couple were “The Strangest Show on Earth”, the headliners at Belle Vue Circus in Manchester. For the centrepiece of their act Lynch was strapped into a 16,000-volt electric chair, “Old Smokey”, a replica of the apparatus then in use at Sing Sing Prison on the Hudson River.
Sylvia would pull the switch, apparently sending thousands of volts coursing through Lynch’s body amid clouds of sparks. Old Smokey now has a permanent home at the Museum of Science and Industry in the city.
The couple amassed a large collection of oddities on their travels; among their menagerie of stuffed animals was a twoheaded calf, the skin of the world’s longest snake, a devil fish and a mammoth’s jaw. Alongside artefacts from the Titanic, they also possessed replicas of the Crown Jewels including the Crown of Queen Mary and the Koh-i-noor diamond. Lynch had a lucrative sideline selling artefacts to Ripley’s Believe It or Not! displays in Blackpool and around the world.
For many years they were regulars on television, including Ken Dodd’s 1976 Christmas show and The Last Resort with Jonathan Ross. Their final appearance was in 2012 on the Channel Four programme, Four Rooms, in which participants attempt to sell valuable possessions.
The Lynches tried to dispose of a 400-year-old eggshell, 160 times larger than a hen’s egg, which belonged to a now extinct flightless bird first found on Madagascar by French colonists in the 1640s.
He made brief appearances in films that included Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and From Russia With Love, and he had a credited role (as “Stromboli”) playing a fire-eater in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man. In later life he enjoyed giving talks in the Lancashire area.
Sylvia Lynch predeceased her husband by five weeks. They had no children.