John Shuttleworth at the Everyman Theatre

While the likes of Michael McIntyre and John Bishop make the transition to the nation’s arenas with relative ease, it’s hard to imagine John Shuttleworth’s Yamaha keyboard driven ditties filling similar venues.

Much more at home in a South Yorkshire village hall or driving down the M62, Shuttleworth’s comic songs, full of provincial detail and everyday minutiae have made Sheffield’s most “versatile singer / songwriter” a major comedy draw now for over twenty years.

This latest tour from Shuttleworth (aka Graham Fellows) is entitled ‘A Man With No More Rolls’ which he explains should have been a discussion on morality but for a misprint on the poster.

Still, it does give Shuttleworth the chance to move on to his favourite topic of food from the threat posed to the tradition roll “since the bap arrived in the mid-eighties” to the modernisation of Shuttleworth’s kitchen by his beloved wife, Mary; a move viewed with suspicion by Shuttleworth mainly due to the new panini toaster.

In-between the banter, Shuttleworth is happy to revisit many of his greatest hits which are greeted like old friends by an audience whose age range betrays the popularity of Shuttleworth’s sneer free humour.

And so we hear Shuttleworth’s tribute to his car (“My Austin Ambassador Y Reg”), his curry based plea to help the aged (“How’s Your Nan?”) and a rather wonderful Nirvana pastiche about the perils of not washing your paint brushes (“Smells Like White Spirit”).

Shuttleworth is no fan of the modern world and his rallying against the removal of the cardboard strip from Bounty bars and the reluctance of TV presenters to mention the three Ws at the start of a website address, go down well with an audience attuned to his grumpy old man persona.

Climaxing with his failed Eurovision entry ‘Pigeons In Flight’ and his ode to the delights of breakfast ‘Serial Cereal Eater,’ it’s still the nigh on perfect ‘I Can’t Go Back To Savoury Now’ which has the audience crying with mirth.

That such a response can be elicited by a song concerning the perils of eating a treacle sponge before you’ve finished your shepard’s pie, is reason enough to delight in one of the UK’s finest comedians.

Click rating: 9/10

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