‘I’ve lastly realised I like John Shuttleworth!’ Graham Fellows on 40 years together with his organ-plonking alter ego | Comedy

When Graham Fellows first carried out in character as novice singer-songwriter John Shuttleworth, Margaret Thatcher was PM and A-ha have been storming the charts. Fellows was 25; his beige vocalist and organist alter ego was in his late 40s. “I began doing it once I was very younger,” remembers Fellows, not a bit of wistfully, after we meet at his agent’s workplace in London. “And I needed to put make-up on: crow’s toes, white stuff in my hair.”

He goes on: “I bear in mind doing a Lily Savage particular in Blackpool for TV. And within the dressing room I used to be sat subsequent to the lead singer of Showaddywaddy.” It by no means takes lengthy for a Fellows/Shuttleworth anecdote to have a tendency in direction of bathos. “He checked out me a bit askance and stated, ‘That is odd. You’re there being made to look older, and I’m right here being made to look youthful.’” However the years roll round, and on the eve of his fortieth anniversary tour as Shuttleworth, Fellows says: “I might need to start out doing that now too.”

By now, in fact, the character has attained “nationwide treasure” standing, his BBC Radio 4 present being, by some measures, Britain’s longest-running radio sitcom. And there’s a brand new guide – John Shuttleworth Takes the Biscuit (“a crumbly assortment of songs and tales”) – out too. Fellows has develop into a type of few comics (good day Steve Coogan and Steve “Depend Arthur Sturdy” Delaney) whose personae age with them over many years – albeit at a slower charge. “John has aged at about 30% of the tempo I age at,” calculates Fellows. “He was 46 once I began, which was the age of Paul McCartney again then. However once I turned 60, he was nonetheless about 57.”

At any charge, the conflation of comic and alter ego is full sufficient to make interviewing Fellows disorientating. He slips out and in of Shuttleworth – all these little “oofs!” and banal asides – with out noticing. The 2 have grown nearer, however solely having first grown additional aside. Look again on Fellows’ public statements over time and there’s plenty of: “I can’t hold doing Shuttleworth for ever.” Covid introduced issues to a head. “After lockdown, when everybody began getting again to regular, I bought uneasy,” says Fellows. “As a result of I’d loved doing nothing, and I believed, ‘Nicely, possibly it’s time to retire.’”

He continues: “I bought panicky, actually. I’d hit my 60s. I used to be ending my movie Father Earth – which you gave a pleasant overview to, thanks. Or,” he corrects himself, “we managed to carve a pleasant overview out of your phrases.” Father Earth was Fellows’ DIY documentary about driving to Orkney together with his dad, to transform a tumbledown church into an eco-friendly recording studio. Followers latched on to its dialogues within the dressing room mirror between character and creator, which provided a piercing glimpse into how the cut up character operated.

“I grew to become conscious round that point that they have been separate folks,” Fellows remembers. “My psychiatrist would love this. However there was one gig in Kendal the place I used to be very cross. I used to be genuinely not completely happy about being on tour, as a result of my dad was about to die. However John was there for me with an, ‘Are we getting some Kendal Mint Cake?’ From a technical viewpoint, I used to be happy with these dialogues. However what it means emotionally and psychologically, I depart to folks like your self, Brian.”

Completely happy to oblige: after an hour in Fellows’ firm, it wouldn’t take Freud to fathom his love/hate relationship with Shuttleworth. Fellows grew to become a star when he was nonetheless a young person, after his novelty single Jilted John reached No 4 within the charts. “That positively unsettled me,” he says. “It out of the blue put a strain on me to succeed and stand out.” He had skilled as an actor however now felt obliged to be a musician and singer. The creation of Shuttleworth helped sq. that circle.

The character felt area of interest for some time, plonking away at his Bontempi organ, hymning bus stops and bars of cleaning soap. “I did gigs early on the place folks have been simply baffled,” says Fellows, who even now sees himself as extra cult act than mainstream. However quickly Shuttleworth soared to Jilted John ranges of recognition, with TV and radio appearances that includes his spouse, Mary, and supervisor Ken, a near-miss within the Perrier comedy awards (“I misplaced to Steve Coogan by one vote”), and a collection of timeless comedy songs that features Pigeons in Flight, Austin Ambassador Y Reg (“It’s the automobile that I revere!”) and my private favorite, I Can’t Go Again to Savoury Now.

However the reprieve from angst was solely short-term. Fellows launched new characters to his repertoire – musicologist Brian Appleton, concreter Dave Tordoff – earlier than abandoning the latter after stage fright led to the cancellation of a fringe run. Because the years and many years handed, he anxious whether or not his output – ever extra Shuttleworth excursions and radio sequence – was enough. “I nonetheless beat myself up that I haven’t performed very a lot,” he tells me. “I used to be considering right this moment, ‘What am I going to say to Brian about different issues that I’m doing?’”

There are ins and outs: a brief movie right here; a sitcom cameo there. Fellows sighs. “I at all times bear in mind listening to Morrissey on Desert Island Discs saying, ‘If a person doesn’t know himself by the point he’s 50, God assist him,’” (Fellows and Morrissey have been born on the identical day.) “And I believed, ‘God assist me. I’m 65 now and I don’t know myself. I’m nonetheless struggling to work out what’s what.’”

And right here Fellows pauses. “I’m simply going to pop an aniseed ball,” he says. “I ended vaping lately. However I’ve bought an oral fixation. Which is outwardly an indication of autism. My girlfriend’s satisfied I’m autistic – and in addition narcissistic. She’s at all times asking me to rein it in. ‘Simply rein in what you stated there.’” He turns to me. “Are you requested to rein issues in on a regular basis?”

Nonetheless, amid all this existential – and oral – restlessness, Fellows has made his peace with Shuttleworth. “Folks come to see him as a result of they need that comforting mixture of songs they know and a few daft chat about John and his cosy little world. And I prefer it too, I’ve realised. I nonetheless get emails and letters speaking about how [my songs] modified folks’s lives, and the way they repeat the lyrics to their wives each day. Depend Arthur Sturdy can’t say that, can he?”

Fellows’ new present, Elevate the Oof!, will embody a brand new quantity a few weird – however very John Shuttleworth – incident at a gig within the “Satan’s Arse”, a collapse Derbyshire, two years in the past, when an viewers member bought misplaced en path to the present and tumbled off a cliff above the venue. The efficiency was deserted whereas emergency providers rescued the punter as he clung to a protruding tree. “He turned up at one other gig about three weeks after the incident,” says Fellows, “with a giant bruise on his head. Not from his fall. One of many rescuers had dislodged a rock above him and it landed on his head.”

And so The Ballad of Dangly Man will be part of an oeuvre hardly ever rivalled within the annals of musical comedy. Is that sufficient to nonetheless Fellows’ nagging sense of underachievement? “I feel I care a bit much less now,” he says. “I don’t actually have ambition any extra. I simply suppose, ‘Write this guide, do that tour, then go and do some volunteering for the native canal.’”

However he’ll hold relishing the easy pleasures. “To have the ability to play a bossa nova beat programmed by a Japanese engineer is a superb factor,” he says. And if, as he ages, he hits the occasional bum observe in opposition to that backbeat, or forgets a tune – properly, taking part in a scatty character supplies ample cowl. “Reasonably than panicking I simply go” – cue John’s voice – “‘Oof, what’s the phrases? Come on, lad, sustain, what’s it? Thanks.’ Then I keep on.”

In that area the place ageing performer meets ageless character, Fellows is at his happiest – and, maybe, most artistic. In multiple occasion, Shuttleworth has absent mindedly ad-libbed a killer new lyric many years right into a music’s life. Just like the climactic pun on his observe You’re Like Manchester, which Fellows says sheepishly, “solely got here to me 15 years after writing the music. There are comics on the market a lot faster than me, who would solely have taken a month, or per week, to work out that advert lib.”

However you’re working, I say, on a completely completely different timeline. “Nicely, possibly I knew on some degree that I used to be going to be doing it for 40 years,” he says, slicing himself some slack. “Perhaps I knew I used to be in for the lengthy haul.”