Dynamo: The day my tricks made Robbie Williams scream

For my fourth birthday I had a party which put me off having parties for years. Mum scrimped to arrange a good spread of sandwiches, crisps, sweets and cake and the children were invited from Bradford’s Top Hill nursery. But no one at all turned up because their parents didn’t want them visiting the Delph estate.

Dad went to jail when I was four. We met again when I was 19 – he’d gone round bars I performed in, asking for me as Dynamo rather than as Steve. We went to a Chicken Cottage. But he was into dodgy shit and I’d just got a Prince’s Trust Start-Up, so it wasn’t going to work.

Mum had a sign in the kitchen which read “Kids, When The Smoke Alarm Sounds, Dinner’s Ready”. It’s fair to say she’s not the best cook in the world. My childhood diet consisted largely of beans on toast, made by babysitters.

Later, when diagnosed with Crohn’s, I realised I’d been eating the worst possible food. At the time I’d just thought all my trumping and hours spent on the toilet was natural.

I remember the smell of mouldy sandwiches in the rubbish bin that two bullies forced me into, before rolling it down one of the two hillocks – known as the Tits – in the grounds of Wyke Comprehensive. It happened every day for three weeks until grandpa taught me tricks to freak the bullies out. Like bending two of my fingers sideways and insisting “I feel no pain” when they said, “Give us your dinner money or we’ll break all your bones.”

I called him grandpa but he was my great-grandpa; my mother had me very young. At 15, I moved in with him, until I was 18. Me and mum’s boyfriends hadn’t clicked and I’d wanted to give her a chance in a relationship. Her boyfriend at the time, who thought me a geek, had lots of cookbooks and was a really good cook. I locked myself away in my room practising magic but I’d rush out when he’d made a spag bol or roast.

My Crohns led to an operation at 17. They opened me up and removed the inflamed bleeding part of my small bowel, a part that produces Vitamin B and other nutrients, hence the darkness around my eyes which the ladies seem to like. I woke up from the operation on morphine and wrapped like a toastie in a metallic sheet. They’d cut through my nervous system so I had to completely learn to walk again. I was basically in a hospital bed for months but they’d always give me three portions of ice-cream. I can’t eat any roughage – so no vegetables except carrots, and no fruits except peeled apples and bananas.

It was my nan who made me the most suitable food for my tummy, and the greatest – corned beef hash or roast chicken, Yorkshire pudding, mashed potatoes and a bit of gravy. I’m fortunate to have become friends with Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver, but my nan, who’s 85, remains my favourite cook in the world.

Abroad I now rely on a runner preparing the chicken sandwiches – or tuna – and jacketless potatoes that I can handle. Filming in India was most difficult and I ended up in hospital. I wasn’t filled with confidence by my nurse saying, “Dynamo, I’m a huge fan. Can you cure my diabetes?”

I’ve never been thrown out of a restaurant but I’ve held up a big coat and then reappeared outside its glass window. I’ve bent forks, made spoons spin and made things appear in bowls. My grandfather kept chickens and I’ve done magic with eggs containing two yolks or no yolk. I’ve turned iced tea into Yorkshire tea.

I started carrying Polos for fresh breath, because chewing-gum didn’t agree with me. Magic with a Polo became one of my showstoppers. I swallow a Polo and then take my chainsaw into my neck and rip the Polo out through my skin, threaded on the chain. When I did it for Robbie Williams he ran away screaming.

I suppose the people telling me what to eat nowadays are my wife and my conditioning coach Ruben Tabares, who also trains David Haye, Amir Khan and Tinie Tempah. He’s getting me right for my tour next year: he’s currently got me on drinks with spinach and I’m keeping a full food diary so he can say ‘Stop eating crisps completely’, ‘Try carrot this week’ or ‘Record the colour of your stools’.

Going nil by mouth the day before an endoscopy isn’t so bad, but when the first thing you eventually taste the next day is thick metallic barium liquid, that’s always disgusting. I’ve got one coming up this month and I’m not looking forward to it. Afterwards I’ll need some seriously nice flavours.

Since The Magic Circle – and Inner Magic Circle – moved to Euston, we often eat before meetings at different eateries in the station. It’s like going to a gym with friends. Whenever there’s a cute waitress it becomes like a bullfight, competing for her attention with tricks.

Series 4 of Dynamo: Magician Impossible is out on Blu Ray and DVD now. To see Dynamo on tour, go to dynamo.seetickets.com.