John Shuttleworth: Fawn Again: Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, 2005
John Shuttleworth: Out of Our Sheds: Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, 2012
John Shuttleworth: My Last Will and Tasty Mint: Gilded Balloon Teviot, Edinburgh, 2017
John Shuttleworth is an imagined singer-songwriter and radio presenter, the creation in 1986 of musician and comedy actor Graham Fellows. Fellows was also responsible for creating punk Jilted John who had a massive hit single in the late 70s with the song Jilted John (Gordon Is A Moron). But it is Shuttleworth that has remained Fellow’s greatest comedy character. Shuttleworth is a cabaret star in his late fifties and hails from Sheffield, South Yorkshire. He has an unobtrusive way about him and is socially inept. His musical talents are usually expressed through his broad Yorkshire vocal and his portable Yamaha keyboard. The songs and stories about his Northern life are hysterically funny,
I first saw Shuttleworth at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2005 where he performed his show Fawn Again. The show focussed on his family and feeling his age. His children have left home, and dinner lady wife, Mary will soon be retired. The show featured a great song about his family car called Austin Ambassador Y Reg.
I saw him again at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2012 with his new show Out of our Sheds, a greatest hits package that featured the classic songs: Pigeons In Flight and Eggs and Gammon.
In 2017, Shuttleworth returned to the festival with the show My Last Will and Tasty Mint which was his brilliant task on mortality. The show featured the new songs I Can’t Go Back To Savoury Now, Mingling With Mourners, Whatever Happened to Vince Hill and How’s Yer Nan?
Always thoroughly entertaining and an absolute pleasure to watch, Shuttleworth is a class comic act.