Inside Blackpool's fire-breathing club

Blackpool Gazette

Meet Blackpool's 'hottest' dance class - where you can learn to fire-breathe.  We find out what it's like at this unique class, and meet a novice fire-breather who took up the alternative hobby at 73 years old.  Instructor, Donna Haughan, shows us some of the techniques, while also warning that this should not be attempted without expert supervision.  The final class of the season was held as a charity event to raise money for Bubble Becca Pug Sanctuary.   VIDEO FILMED AND EDITED BY LUCINDA HERBERT.

Transcript

00:00Fire breathing is where you take a special fuel, put it in your mouth, spit it out in a very fine mist and set it on fire.

00:07We're dancers, we do it on stage a lot. I've been doing it for about 10 years and I've been teaching all summer long.

00:13Oh, it makes you feel absolutely incredible. You feel like ten men when you do it, yeah.

00:19So I got into it purely because it looks fantastic on stage, but when people saw me do it, all my dancers wanted me to teach them how to do it.

00:26And so I've been on several refresher courses on and off the year to make sure that I'm as safe as possibly can be.

00:31And last year we brought it to Blackpool. So this is our second year of teaching fire breathing to Blackpool.

00:37Are you doing two sticks then? One in each hand? Are you doing a crossover?

00:41It feels great. And when you see the pictures afterwards, it really feels great. I'm not scared. I'm not scared of the fire.

00:50And I thought, I'm usually an adventurous person. I've done skydiving and quite a few things.

00:57So I thought, well, why not fire? Fire breathing. See, see what it's like, you know.

01:03And when I did skydive, I thought I was crazy. It's all right, Moose.

01:09So fire, I thought, oh, that's dangerous. You can't do that. But I thought, no, I'm going to do it.

01:17I'm going to prove that it's safe and it looks lovely.

01:21Very good.

01:23I saw Donna do it in a show and I thought, wow, that looks amazing. It really does look impressive.

01:29And then when she offered a chance of learning, I was like, yeah, why not? It just looks so much fun.

01:35It's sort of dangerous, but you go, you know, you've got to do these things.

01:38The very first time when you're actually given the lit flame and you actually just do some very simple starting

01:44where you're sort of like running your fingers through the top of the flame and you go, actually, this is real.

01:48You know, it's like, what am I doing? But after a few seconds, when you sort of know how to handle it properly,

01:54that fear goes away and it's just actually you sort of like actually enjoying the movement, watching the flame.

02:00Well, I love pugs and I've had my first pug for about nine years and it was back in February.

02:05I thought it's time to get another one. So I went to the Bubble Becker Pug Sanctuary in Cheshire

02:09and that's where I got my second pug chubby from and thought, you know, I could really help out just by putting on a fire course.

02:15So that's what today is all about. And all the proceeds are going to the Bubble Becker Pug in Cheshire.

02:20Well, this is Chubby and Chubby is one of the rescues from Becker Bubble Pugs.

02:26And he is our favourite boy pug. He comes to our classes and cheers everyone up.

02:34And he's just such a lovely boy. And that's what we're here for is to help raise the money for where he's come from.

02:40It'll be safe tucked in doors. Keep him warm while we play with the fire.

02:45Watch him on the safest things.

02:46Absolutely. Yeah. And he's always there to work on us when we come back in.

02:50He's so cute.

02:52He's so cute.

02:54Growing up there.

03:02He is so cute.

03:03He's so cute.

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