Ilkley's Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman on The Warlock Effect book being picked up for TV by Steven Moffat's Hartswood Films

He is referring The Warlock Effect, their co-authored novel which entwines the two worlds of magic trickery and Cold War espionage. Released to complimentary reviews last month, plans are already under way for a television version made with Hartswood Films, the company behind BBC hit Sherlock and whose creative director is the renowned former writer of Dr Who, Steven Moffat.

As an actor Nyman has appeared in shows such as Peaky Blinders and the film Judy but also co-created much of illusionist Derren Brown’s award-winning TV specials, while Dyson was an originator of legendary television comedy The League of Gentleman and has script edited on the likes of Killing Eve.

The Warlock Effect is the latest iteration of the pair’s long working relationship. But really, its roots go back much further to the Jewish summer camp Chai, in Somerset, in 1981, where as teenagers the pair first met and bonded over their links to Leeds, where Dyson is from, when put into the same dormitory.

"My weekends as a kid was going from Leicester to Leeds to see all my grandparents and extended family,” says Nyman, 57.

"So I felt an instant affinity to Jeremy that was then remarkably backed up by the fact we were both obsessed with horror films, and Jeremy horror literature, and dirty jokes.”

Nyman had taken along his rag mags - joke booklets which at that time were created at universities and featured humour which today would get you “cancelled, arrested and burnt at the stake,” he chuckles.

"We would just sit up at night, cracking up at the filth in these things and talking about horror. And then Jeremy revealed that he did magic, and was excellent at it.”

Nyman also liked magic, so this extra connection enabled an “instant bond that then very quickly turned into this lifelong brotherly love of each other”.

After finding success in their respective careers – Nyman has directed stage shows including Olivier award-winning Something Wicked This Way Comes for Derren Brown, while Ilkley-based Dyson has released a novel and three collections of short stories – the pair teamed up to co-write the play Ghost Stories. After its premiere in 2010 it became a West End hit and then a film featuring numerous Yorkshire locations in 2017.

The Warlock Effect was originally envisioned as a film, too, but an editor was on the look-out for books about magic and happened to ask if they had anything that was suitable. Of course they did.

It is the story of Ludvik Weinschenk, a Jewish boy who has fled to England from Nazi Germany with a pack of playing cards and three tricks to his name. Twelve years later, in 1950s Soho, he is the most famous magician in Britain, known as Louis Warlock. When his talent for deception attracts the attention of the British secret service, Louis finds himself sent across Europe with a dangerous mission to fulfil.

Funnily enough, the book starts in a dormitory, where young Ludvik resorts to his cards to win over a group of boys. That use of magic tricks to survive is something Nyman and Dyson have found to be true.

“There's no question that magic as a hobby and an art is peopled by people who use it as a survival tool socially,” says Nyman, who lives in London and in 2018 was awarded the Magic Circle's Maskelyne Award for services to British Magic. “‘Oh God, I hate parties, I can't talk to people. I know, would you like to see a trick?’ And it gets you through those seven minutes.”

Dyson, 56, adds: “You don't tend to get big athletic types involved in magic. If you have prowess on the football field, or the rugby field, or the athletic track, you don't tend to be drawn to something like magic. It's for the people who don't have that prowess, who may feel disempowered or powerless in lots of other ways. It's a way of acquiring some power because you have secrets and knowledge that no one else has. And that ability to entertain - much as with comedy, if you know how to get a laugh - becomes something of a shield and can be a weapon as well, if you slip over to the dark side.”

One day Dyson was contacted by Moffat, who in publicity for the book is quoted as saying it “could have been grown in a vat especially for me”.

Dyson says: “It had just gone to production companies, just been submitted around, and I got this email out of the blue from Steven just to say how much he adored it, and I couldn’t believe it.”

He knew Moffat second hand through Mark Gatiss, Dyson’s co-star in The League of Gentleman who also appeared in Hartswood’s Sherlock, of which the Yorkshireman was a big fan.

"To get an email like that is a pure pinch-yourself moment. You just don’t even dream about such things.”

Nyman adds: “The thing is, we’re not really changed from when we were 15. So we’re not cynical at all, and we are aware that there are many thousands of people who would just dream to do any one of the things that we have been blessed to do. It's a lot of sacrifice and pain to do those things, it's not like it's been dropped into our laps, but it's just an amazing gift to have that opportunity, if nothing else, just to be paid to spend time with Jeremy, let alone to then do all the other things. It's wonderful.”

The Warlock Effect, published by Hodder & Stoughton, is out now in hardback, audio and eBook.