Keith Flint: The man away from The Prodigy, from a motorcycling fanatic to the ‘coolest man in the world’

The man who terrified parents for a living revealed himself to be a much-loved motorcycling team owner that became the energetic hub of the paddock, his riders tell Jack de Menezes

Ian Hutchinson had just won his first race at the Isle of Man TT in five years. Since becoming the first man to win all five main motorcycle races around the island in a single week, Hutchinson had undergone 30 separate operations on a badly broken leg and the complications that came with it, but here we was, in June 2015, standing on the top step of the podium taking it all in his stride.

Standing In front of him was another man: diminutive in stature but with the eyes of everyone in attendance fixated on him, he released all the built-up emotion from 150 miles of racing that had just lit up the island. That man was Keith Flint.

Flint, vocalist of electronic dance group The Prodigy, took his own life this week, aged 49. His death triggered a huge outpouring of emotion within the music industry, but there was just as big a response from the motorcycling world. Flint was a bike fanatic, so much so that when his own dreams of racing failed to materialise, he started his own team.

And like that, in 2014, Team Traction Control was born, competing firstly in the British Supersport Championship and quickly expanding to the roads of the Isle of Man TT and North West 200, among others. A superstar had entered the two-wheel paddock the likes of which it had never seen before, yet the man who arrived was not the same one that terrified mums and dads on a daily basis, as his riders immediately discovered.

“There’s no other way to say it, Keith is the coolest man on earth,” says James Rispoli, who rode for Flint’s TTC outfit in 2014 and 2015. “He showed me how to be a showman and he taught me how to be humble. In the UK he is such a big megastar but at the same time he wouldn’t act like it. Like every day, if there was a fan anywhere he would never be in a rush because he would see them all, he’d be there way after things had finished because he was the type of guy that if you asked him for the shirt off his back, he’d give it to you.”

American rider Rispoli first met Flint aged 22 at the 24 Heures Moto at Le Mans six years ago. “It was kind of a crazy meeting. I wouldn’t say fate or destiny or something, but it was…pretty much within the day Keith had bought me a ticket to fly back to Britain to do a one-off race at Brands Hatch and we got talking about doing the following season together, and that was kind of it. There was no negotiation, it was just a chat on the side of the track and he was like ‘hey this is what I’m trying to do, would you be interested?’ and I said ‘Yeah!’

“The crazy thing is it didn’t really hit me who he was until I was flying home and I saw The Prodigy album with the crab on it (The Fat Of The Land), the really cool one, and I was like ‘no frickin way, I just rapped out with him, who is this guy?’. It was crazy because at that time I didn’t have a ride in the US and I went over to Le Mans to just have fun. It wasn’t fate or destiny but it was that easy, there was no me trying anything, we just met and made a deal.”

Ian Hutchinson's heroic victory with Flint's Team Traction Control outfit went down in history (www.iomttraces.com)

That summarised Flint’s persona in the paddock – his real persona. The demonising eyes that stared deep into your soul are saved only for the stage as part of his Prodigy act, whereas this honest, energetic, passionate and interesting human being hopped from one British race track to the next, eager to learn as much as possible while shooting for the stars though TTC.

“I came over with two bags, I didn’t have any family or anything with me, it was just me,” recalls Rispoli. “But he got behind me and made sure I had everything I needed. Those two years with Traction Control, they were hard - they were really hard to start with because it was a team built from scratch and we switched manufacturer’s mid-year – Keith wanted us to do well and when I think about Keith, he never doubted anything. He always used to tell me ‘you’ve got the talent and we’re gonna get the best bikes’ and that was the way.

“I was with the team in 2014 in that first year. Then the second year where the first couple of rounds were hard, we came back from the break and got the first podium, and I remember Keith was up there and that outpouring of emotion – and I know that he wasn’t on stage but it felt like that. It felt like there was a thousand people standing there and that memory right there, I can still feel that. That was pretty special. It was so special because we put so much into it, he put so much time into it, obviously I did too. And we did it, and to finally do it...”

That sight was a replica of his special moment with Hutchinson, just two weeks prior on Monday 8 June 2015. In one moment, the five years of torture that Hutchinson had gone through and the gruelling work that Flint had committed to starting up the team delivered one of the TT’s most iconic images.

Flint's and Hutchinson's memorable victory in 2015 remains one of the TT's great moments (www.iomttraces.com)

It removed the aura that surrounded the face of The Prodigy, and revealed that behind the fame and fortune, the larger-than-life character and intimidating stare, was a man – a normal man – who like everyone surrounding him simply loved motorbikes.

“When I first saw Keith in a motorcycle racing paddock, it was probably with the same reaction as most,” says Motorcycle News’ MotoGP reporter Simon Patterson, who spent many a day alongside Flint while covering BSB and the roads. “I was a little bit awestruck to see a musical legend mingling with us mere mortals, and a little bit of trepidation at approaching such a terrifying looking individual.

“But after introductions from mutual friends and a bit of time with him, it became abundantly clear that while there might have been a stage persona, underneath it was just another bloke who loved bike racing. Down to earth, extremely knowledgeable and on occasion even a little bit shy, he soon became just another one of the faces in the paddock you’d always stop to say hello to. Seeming to be able to relax among equals instead of being Keith Flint, ‘Firestarter’, he’ll be a huge absence to British racing.”

News of Flint’s tragic passing emerged on Monday, just two days after he was seen laughing, smiling and joking with friends. Of course this is not uncommon, and sadly Flint will not be the last person to suffer in silence despite the progression in forming new avenues for young men to express their troubles. Motorcycling is a notoriously tough environment simply by nature. Riders have to demonstrate a level of bravery that the right-thinking person cannot comprehend, particularly when it comes to the deadly roads of the TT, or dragging themselves out of gravel trap after gravel trap, bruised and broken but far from beaten.

Yet waves of tributes towards Flint came from the motorcycling community, that same emotion that he emitted himself aimed straight back towards him. Yes, the news was a tragedy, but it brought out the true feeling for Flint that, Rispoli believes, he never really knew existed.

“I don’t think - because he was so humble - that he realised how many people he touched,” Rispoli adds. “When the outpouring of tributes came out, you had these high-level people from presidents of Arai and stuff like that. He’s left a massive imprint on motorsport and it’s kind of crazy because everyone knows Keith Flint of The Prodigy, but not every knows the real him.

“For me, whenever I was around Keith it was a ‘buzz’, and that was the word: ‘buzzing’. We were always ‘buzzing’, there was never a downside really. Of course people have bad days, but I never saw that side. There was such positivity and energy and passion. Keith was like a best friend, and around me he was always so positive and everything, and that’s how I remember him and that’s how I think everyone remembers him.

“It’s a sad, tragic story but I don’t think people will look at that side. I think he touched so many people in so many ways, he carried something special whatever it was - I don’t know what it was - but he was that showman and he taught me a lot and gave me so much, he pretty much gave me everything over there.”

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