An Interview with Graham Fellows

Mostly known as the comedic mastermind behind John Shuttleworth and Jilted John, Graham Fellows has spent nearly four decades blending music, humour and storytelling. Here, he talks to Victoria Holdsworth about his creative journey, which has been as unique as his characters…

Hi Graham.
Is that Victoria, the lady with the cold?

Yes, apologies if I’m a little stuffy, but it’s my turn to be poorly. I hope you’re well.
I’m great, thanks. I was fighting something yesterday, but it seems to have been warded off. That’s a great Yorkshire accent you have; where are you from?

I live within the mystical realms of the rhubarb triangle.
Oooh yes, I have heard of that place. I used to love eating that as a kid, dipped in sugar. What would you like to know that you don’t know already? I went to Manchester today and did Loose Ends, which was fun. Lots of people were coming up to me and saying some very nice things about me.

I actually worked with you years and years ago at Wakefield Opera House, which you won’t remember, but I was a stagehand on Packing Them In, and it was the first time I had seen you perform.
Oh my God! That’s going back some! That was my first TV work as the character John Shuttleworth.

I remember you sang your classic tune, ‘Catch the Fox’.
I did, yes, and it was one of the only times on TV I did because there was a complaint from one person in Bedfordshire. [laughs]

Graham as his comedy alter ego, John Shuttleworth

“I should have been learning my lines”

You are, without a doubt, one of Yorkshire’s finest comedy exports; however, you split your time between Leicester and Orkney. What, if anything, do you miss about home?
Well, I do still come back to Yorkshire quite a bit. I was back home last week, actually. I have three sisters, and we all had a Christmas lunch at a hotel in Sheffield, except it wasn’t a festive menu as promised! I think there was some AI on my computer booking system that was malfunctioning, so we had fish and chips [laughs], but it was nice just to see everyone.

Whereabouts in Sheffield do you hail from? I used to live and work in Sheffield for quite some time.
Broomhill!

I know it well. I previously lived up towards Millhouses.
Bloody hell, I drove up that way too. The next day I actually went to Ringinglow. I walked there from Broomhill just to see if I could get a bit of fresh air. I was replicating a walk I did when I was about eleven years old, to the roundhouse. When I was eleven and I did it, my dad said that I had to draw a picture of it once I got there, to prove that I’d been there and done the walk. But this time I just took a photograph to prove that I’d done it, and sent it to my sister. It was a lovely nostalgic walk. So yes, I do get back to Yorkshire quite a bit; however, today was also nostalgic, going back to Manchester.

Didn’t you go to university in Manchester?
No… well, yes, but it was called a polytechnic then. [laughs]

I know you have mentioned your sisters, but some people may not know that your brother-in-law was actually Ainsley Harriot. However, what three ingredients would be in yours or John’s Ready Steady Cook carrier bag?
Yes, he was! Oof! That’s just completely stumped me. [laughs] I don’t follow conventional recipes, and my girlfriend always tells me off! I use a lot of garlic and onion, but then I chuck in tomato ketchup. So yes, I’ll pick those three ingredients: garlic, onion, and tomato ketchup!

What did a young Graham want to be when he was growing up, and what led you to a career in comedy and music?
Well, I wanted to be an actor, but I struggled to make it as an actor. So, due to the lack of success after a good few years, I realised I was more interested in songwriting. Perhaps I should have been learning my lines for things more. [laughs] I never actually wanted to get into comedy. I just created John Shuttleworth as a joke, just as I created Jilted John as a joke, just as I wrote ‘Catch the Fox’ as a joke. I actually wrote that song before I created John Shuttleworth, in about 1983. It was a spoof of a policeman doing a public information film. Often, I would do little parody things, and they would turn out to be something bigger, and that was the case with John Shuttleworth. I had done a parody tape of somebody who was writing demos for song publishers, and that’s something that I used to hear a lot of. When I was trying to be a successful songwriter with a music publisher called Chapel Music, for a laugh, I decided to make a spoof recording of somebody trying to be an aspiring songwriter, and that was John Shuttleworth. The tape collected a lot of attention, and suddenly I found that people were saying, ‘That thing you sent us was really funny; can we have some more of that?’ So then the serious songs that I was working on, and trying to get off the ground, took a back seat, and they have ever since, because John Shuttleworth has become my bread and butter. Sorry, that was a very long-winded answer. [laughs]

Who are your musical and comedy influences, and why?
Well, musically, that’s such a… oooh, now there’s lots and lots of musical influences. As a kid, I used to like hymns in the choir. I loved groups like The Monkees.

The Monkees are one of my favourite groups too.
You sound too young to remember them. [laughs] I remember them in 1967, and I had a massive sort of crush on them really, when I was a little kid. It wasn’t the Beatles—although I do like them—it was always The Monkees for me. I draw inspiration from a lot of music, and almost everything I hear has some sort of influence on me. My musical tastes are very eclectic! Comedy-wise…[pauses] because I got into comedy by accident, my influences were more to do with things like Mike Leigh plays and Alan Bennett scripts. I did used to enjoy some early Eddie Izzard and people like Phil Kay, and I always thought Frank Skinner was very funny. But, you know, I never really wanted to be a stand-up comic. My route into comedy has been very odd, especially through acting and music.

Graham Fellows
image, and top: Danny Davis

“A tight spot”

So, out of stage, screen, and radio, which is your favourite medium to work in?
Probably radio, because that’s where you really feel that you are crafting something. Having said that, though, with screen work, you are crafting something with that too. My last film, Father Earth—if you’re aware of that.

I am aware of it, but I haven’t watched it yet. It’s on my list.
Excellent. I’ve just actually spoken to the DJ Stuart Maconie, and he really enjoyed it. We were talking about it on Loose Ends because it shows me talking to John Shuttleworth in the mirror, in a dressing room. It’s a bit weird. [laughs] It took ten years to make that film, but I also made a couple of others called It’s Nice Up North and Southern Softies, which were a real labour of love. The live stuff does give you more instant feedback though, and that’s what I like. Plus, you get to meet nice people afterwards. Meeting your fans is always lovely.

So, are there any acting roles or characters that you covet?
You see, I watch things like Wolf Hall, and I see my old lodger, Mark Rylance. Yes, he used to be my lodger [laughs], as described in my song, ‘Mark Rylance Was My Lodger’, from the album Weird Town. When I lived in Manchester, he really was my lodger, so I wrote a song about it. [laughs] But when I see things like that, I do think I would have liked to have played the Timothy Spall character, the Duke of Norfolk. I’d like to play nasty baddies and weirdos. I just played a bit of a weirdo in something called The Power of Parker, which is a sitcom for the BBC that will be coming out next year. I don’t really do much acting, and I don’t really get asked very much, but I don’t have any great desire to play Hamlet or Macbeth or anything like that. I do have a problem remembering lines, so any roles I did covet would have to be fairly small, or the words plastered all over the scenery. [laughs]

In 2015, you did actually appear on Celebrity Mastermind, with the specialist subject of Donald Crowhurst, who disappeared whilst competing in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Sailing Race. What was your fascination with his story in particular, and do you really believe his demise was suicide?
Yes, I think it was. I don’t think how else it could have happened. There were diaries found which show that he just clearly lost his mind, and he sort of ends mid-sentence…but I suppose that also means a shark could have leapt up and grabbed him whilst he was writing it, but I don’t think so. The poor man had got himself into such a tight spot, there was no way he couldn’t have. He was in the lead in this race, and he was going to have all his log books scrutinised when he got back to England, because he would have been the winner, and he would have been found out that he just didn’t go around the world and he cheated. He hung around in the Atlantic. It’s a marvellous story which is of its time, because you couldn’t get away with that now with all the modern nautical equipment and GPS systems and the like, as it’s so accurate, and he would be tracked on computer all the time. It’s a fantastic book, which I would recommend reading. My knowledge of Donald Crowhurst mainly came from that one book, The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst, by Ron Hall and Nicholas Tomalin.

But you did manage to achieve a third-place position in the show.
Yeah, I was in second after the third round, but I screwed up on my general knowledge. I don’t concentrate too well, and he asked me, “What’s the only mammal capable of true flight?” and I didn’t really hear what he said, and I said “birds.” [laughs] But of course birds are birds—they’re not mammals. The answer was “bat”! [laughs] To top it off, I was also wearing a really embarrassing, crappy T-shirt. I thought that if I dressed down it would look good… but it didn’t. [laughs]

Obviously, your most famous character is the mighty John Shuttleworth, and you have mentioned how his existence came about, but do you ever feel like he has taken over your life somewhat?
Not now. I did, though. I’ve been playing John for nearly forty years now. This new tour is a 40th-anniversary tour, so there was probably a time in the 90s where I did feel he was all-consuming. I’ve not really been John much recently. With lockdown, it was almost like everything was all over really, and it had stopped me halfway through a tour, which I managed to finish after lockdown, but then I started to miss him, so this tour is kind of a way to hang out with him again.

“Celebratory”

Does it have any effect on your own personality being someone else for a majority of the time?
[laughs] Well, it might do… I don’t know. I mean, if you watch Father Earth, then you might find an answer to that. You can get depressed if you are doing one character all the time, and it can affect who you are. When my kids were young—and I’ve got three kids—they thought that I wasn’t hanging out with them quite a lot, because I was trying to finish a radio show. So, you could argue that I was resentful of John because he was taking me away from my children, and when my father was ill, I was having to do a tour, and that subject is covered in the film as well.

Where can we see or listen to any other of the characters you have created and developed over the years?
You can’t really. Father Earth is my latest feature film, and that will be available on DVD from shuttleworths.co.uk, and you can watch the trailer at fatherearthmovie.co.uk. There are bits of my character Brian Appleton on YouTube, or even Dave Tordoff, but they do pop up on my DVD, The Minor Tour… And Other Mythological Creatures, which is also on the website. And there is a Brian Appleton CD on there too, for anyone who wants to check it out. I have just actually released a new CD on the website too, which is called The Pumice Stone & Other Rock Songs. I do like my puns. [laughs]

So, you mentioned that John is back in 2025 with a new tour for his 40th anniversary. What can we expect from him this time around?
All the dates for the tour are available on the website. It is certainly going to be a celebratory tour, which is called Raise The Oof! Another pun [laughs], but as ever Ken Worthington, John’s manager, has managed to not do his job properly and removed the “R”. But, as you know, “Oof!” is what John says quite a lot, so it kind of means nothing. [laughs] But it’s going to be what I’ve always really done—it’s John and his observations of life, but the emphasis will be on trying to celebrate his 40 years in show business, but perhaps not really being able to because he feels he’s still not reached the level that he needs to be at. He’s still playing at the hospice and still only getting a few coppers in a little brown envelope for his petrol money. [laughs] He was hoping for a gig with Billy Joel, but of course, it turned out to be a gig in the village hall. All the tour titles have been puns really, not forgetting Pillock of the Community, One Foot In The Gravy, and even John Shuttleworth’s Back was a pun on him suffering from a bad back. The details are what people come for to go along with the puns, and there will be some nice new songs, including a song called ‘We Saw The New Year Inn and In’. There is even a new book out called John Shuttleworth Takes The Biscuit, which is in full colour and has lots of cartoons in it, with a kind of comic annual quality about it, from Omnibus Press. It will officially be available in March 2025, but will also be available on the tour.

Full dates for John Shuttleworth’s ‘Raise the Oof’ tour can be found on shuttleworths.co.uk – Yorkshire dates are here