This is to draw the reader's attention to Richard Herring's recent podcast featuring Graham Fellows, otherwise hapless middle-aged musician and songwriter John Shuttleworth (above). It can be downloaded here.
The interview is leisurely, and fairly frank as well as funny, perhaps helped by the fact that Herring once gave Fellows a fiver in the nineties when the latter was having no joy at a cash machine. (Herring framed the cheque he received in return, making his act of kindness doubly kind.) But it's clear, as the conversation progresses, that they do have a certain amount in common, that act of charity aside: both have forged unusual paths in the business of comedy after an initial bout of fame.
I don't recall reading or hearing too many other interviews with Mr Fellows since his long-ago days as spurned teenager Jilted John (he had a hit single of the same name in the seventies before he developed the older character), although one detail which sticks in my mind from, I think, an NME interview is of his associating with elderly men who bred fancy mice; the Shuttleworth character derives in part from afternoons spent with such people in drafty church halls.
Fellows announced during the podcast that he will be reviving John Shuttleworth next year after having given him a bit of a layoff - and it's scary to reflect that he is now older than his creation, who is forever hovering somewhere in his late fifties. I will certainly try to catch his new live show, to be entitled John Shuttleworth's Back, although I have to admit I'm less keen on the character live, as John's command of the crowd seems at odds with his "loser" persona: the intimacy of radio seems a better fit.
There have been several series of The Shuttleworths on BBC Radio 4, in which John talks directly to the listeners and tries, with varying degrees of success, to involve his circle (his wife Mary, his "sole agent" and neighbour Ken Worthington, and others) in the programme.
And there was a bit of a revelation about the radio show - for me, anyway - on the Herring podcast. I knew, or assumed, that there must be a bit of speeding up of the tape for voices such as Mary (Fellows, a trained actor, plays all the roles) but I didn't realise that The Shuttleworths is not actually scripted: he told Herring that although he had some idea of where he was going he disliked the sense of lines being obviously read in radio drama. Given that voices are recorded one at a time I reckon that makes The Shuttleworths an especially notable achievement.
If you haven't yet discovered or been beguiled by his radio show you are
urged to do so. Perhaps the supreme example of his art in this medium
is the episode from the first or second series entitled Pillock of the Community. This consists largely of John's wait
outside a mysteriously closed hospice where he is due to play a gig -
and it's left to the listener's imagination whether the inhabitants are
simply ignoring him, perhaps having been entertained enough in the past.
John is confused but notices a Curly Wurly wrapper in the hedge and ...
well, it's better to listen to this non-tale unfold at its own pace
than to have it described. When one of John's songs swells up at the
end, it's similarly nondescript yet loaded with significance:
And pubs and clubs
The bus to Crookes
And scouts and cubs
And doberman pups
And woodland paths
And parks and caffs
A Shandy Bass
In a lady's glass
It's a litany of small pleasures in a small life, but their importance to the character who has hymned them is beyond doubt, and for as long as the song lasts we feel something of it too.
Graham Fellows himself said (in William Cook's highly recommended book Ha Bloody Ha) that that episode was the best writing he'd ever done, even though nothing happened. (Presumably that means certain sections of The Shuttleworths were indeed written, or perhaps because this episode was essentially a monologue it required a different approach.)
One of the reasons it works so well, I think, is the way that pathos is held at bay. Even if John is a loser (especially if an audience of OAPs are desperate to avoid his act) he is a kind of poet too, not only via the details noted in the song but in his ability to seize on whatever he sees around him as he thinks aloud. Just as the aggressive optimism of Tony Hancock's character offsets his failures so John's ability to find meaning and interest in things means we needn't worry too much about him: he is well-insulated, even if a song in another episode speaks of John's feeling "alone with the day", which implies that loneliness, or boredom, is an everpresent threat. And Fellows tells Herring that Shuttleworth is "foolish" but also "sweet".
Occasionally the radio programmes have branched out to include celebrity guests and prankish phone calls. These are also enjoyable but do not work quite so well for me. The calls betray some signs of the performer's enjoyment and lessen the illusion. And why should biggish names condescend to give this man any of their time? This is why I'm also less keen on seeing John live - what does he think he's doing in a crammed theatre when his normal gigs are in hospices etc (or not, as the case may be)?
No, his true métier seems to be the radio, where you can believe he's wandering round with a tape recorder trying desperately to collect enough things of interest to fill a programme, even if you still have to suspend your disbelief about the BBC allowing him airtime. The domestic Shuttleworth, irritated by trivial things, with the merest suggestion of what the other members of his family think of him (not much), with the subtext always the need (in his life as in the programme) to fill up the time is the most deeply satisfying.
Perhaps those live gigs and variations of the radio format are best appreciated as a kind of dream sequence, a chance to enjoy how John might behave in the unlikely event of success coming his way. And to invoke Hancock again, Galton and Simpson were never that consistent about how much fame had been enjoyed by the character they created. So maybe I should stop going down this route.
Far more interesting, in any case, to ponder over an episode of The Shuttleworths when Ken makes a reference to John's first wife only for John to shush him, fearful Mary will overhear. What's going on there? And to consider more deeply whether, in the Pillock of the Community episode, everyone in the hospice really was furtively watching behind lace curtains, praying he would go away and entertain somewhere else.
But that "Pillock" episode is a kind of victory (as well as a humiliation) for John, given the amount of interest and pleasure he can derive from a discarded sweet wrapper ... In fact, now I think of it, on an unconscious level my reservations about the Radio Shuttleworth series with celebs may have been not so much aesthetic as concern for his welfare: this is a man, after all, whose hobbies include measuring reservoir levels; surely exposure to C-list celebrities on a semi-regular basis might well result in some kind of sensory overload?
I've seen Fellows perform as Shuttleworth at least three times, and I must admit I did have to laugh when I saw him at Edinburgh a few years ago with a show around 5.15 - this was for our safety, John explained during the performance, as any later there could be "youths congregating outside."
It's just that for me the illusion is lost a bit when he's facing these large crowds who are laughing a lot at what he says and yet he carries on, by and large, as if they're not. I prefer the added melancholic dimension of listening on your own in the dark to John doing pointless things to fill in the day (and try to find enough material to constitute a show). In the same way that it can be a more melancholy experience to watch Laurel and Hardy by yourself rather than in a packed cinema (when you're more likely to register the pain and resignation in Hardy's expression in a closeup which, with the original audience present, would merely have been intended to mark time until the laughter died down) so for me the essential Shuttleworth is a solitary experience.
Of course an alternative explanation is it may be about my wanting to feel that only I get it - I don't want to see other people sharing my "secret" so maybe it's cultural snobbishness too.
Anyway, the details of the John Shuttleworth's Back tour can be found on his website here.
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