The black stage adorned with only a stool, a microphone and his keyboard (“ballad setting ON!”), all the attention was on versatile singer-songwriter Shuttleworth as he ripped through (or rather, carefully primed apart) a genre-defying set, from rock ’n’ roll (“Yes, it is the devil’s music”) to calypso (“Get up and move your feet!”), playing a lot of his self-claimed ‘classics’ such as Y-Reg (an ode to his Austin Ambassador) and Can’t Go Back to Savoury Now (a poignant story of starting on your pudding before you’ve had your fill of the main). The title of the show is actually the result of a typo, and Shuttleworth uses this to talk both about the titular Ken (neighbour/friend/booking agent) and some of his favourite weekends… Other rambling topics are digressed upon, such as how Cinnamon Grahams have lost his trust now that they have changed their name to Curiously Cinnamon (“it sounds like drugs!”) to the fact that Andy Murray doesn’t win anymore because he’s stopped doing “that angry face.” Indeed Fellows gets the middle-England, Rover-driving, polo-neck jumper-wearing feel right down to the very detail! My friend and I, nursing a pre-show drink, perused the merchandise which consisted of the usual fare of CDs, DVDs and fridge magnets to more age-appropriate items such as flasks, tea towels and travel rugs. I went to see this Leicester Comedy Fest show at The Little Theatre, a venue I had not been to before and was surprised to find it just tucked away off of a main street I have used for years. This would set the tone of the evening as the wonderfully bumbling, lovingly befuddled OAP Shuttleworth, the alter ego of veteran comic Graham Fellows, took the stage. He came on stage halfway through eating a custard cream, which was, disappointingly, a lot softer than he expected.
“We all go a little funny when we get older.” What is probably best described to the layman as “an elderly Alan Partridge doing Bill Bailey”, or rather, “Count Arthur Strong goes musical”, John Shuttleworth has rocked audiences all over, from Windermere to Kendal, Guildford to Maidstone. 9th February 2015 John Shuttleworth – A Wee Ken To Remember‘
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