Life, death and a case of existential angst over a margarine tub

HANG on a minutiae. There are many big, important events happening in the world, but our focus this week is on the small stuff. You know, the stuff you’re not meant to sweat.

That stuff is meat and oven chips to John Shuttleworth, alter-ego of actor Graham Fellows, and well-known anorak about town. Or at least about Sheffield.

Shuttleworth brings his show, focusing will be … mortality. Yes indeed, big deal.

Thoughts of The End have been brought on by a touch of sciatica and, quite possibly, the stress caused by bidding for a toaster on eBay.

That’s the subject of one of his songs indeed and, as The Herald revealed in an interview recently, we can also look forward to an extended version of Two Margarines, which explores the angst of having two tubs on the go at the same time. Shuttleworth is perhaps best known for avian classic Pigeons in Flight, but is not afraid of political themes, for example with Mutiny Over the Bounty, a protest song about the removal of the cardboard tray in Bounty bars.

It would be fair to say he hasn’t fully mastered his Yamaha Portasound PSS680, with its relentless drum samples sometimes running away from him. But that doesn’t stop his agent, Ken Worthington, from treating him to a pasta bake at the garden centre.

This is a man who gets a warm feeling of camaraderie from standing at the counter in a Chinese takeaway watching the television. He’d be in seventh heaven if it was showing the old BBC series The Brothers because he liked seeing the big trucks being driven in and out of the warehouse.

This is a man who can eat seven Orange Clubs, a man who makes daily trips to the reservoir to check the water levels, a man not to be missed if you want to learn more about life, the Sheffield area and everything … up to a point. John Shuttleworth: My Last Will & Tasty Mint is at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow on Thursday, March 23, and Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, on Friday, March 24.