Here be dragons

Penn you are best known for your work as Penn & Teller. What is it like working with new partner Piff The Magic Dragon?

- MARION McMULLEN

Penn: It's very nice. I've been working with Teller more than 50 years now and you get a dynamic.

Teller goes out and directs Shakespeare and does all sorts of erudite things and I get to hang around with Piff and go to Great Britain.

Because I'm 71, Piff still feels like a newish friend. Time just flies by but I guess I have known Piff for almost 20 years now.

Piff and I are very close and we're now bringing the new Piff and Pop’s Magic Shoppe shows to the UK.

Piff: We love hanging around and chatting and having fun and we are going to do that for money. We need money.

The first time we performed together we thought we had under 20 minutes of material and we ended up doing 45 minutes.

Penn: That's because we are able to riff and go places and the Piff and Pop show is more anarchy than Penn and Teller.

Did you both hit it off when you first met?

Penn: You know it really was a case of love at first sight when he did our TV show Penn & Teller: Fool Us.

At the time I was living under a rock and had never heard of Piff the Magic Dragon and he walked out on stage and I was enamoured by the act and with Piff himself from the moment I saw him.

There have been more than 400 magicians on the show and I’ve become friends with two of them.

(Laughs) And one is a Spaniard so it hardly counts.

Piff: No, it doesn’t count.

What has led to the new show?