Review: John Shuttleworth, Out Of Our Sheds, Pocklington Arts Centre

Review: John Shuttleworth, Out Of Our Sheds, Pocklington Arts Centre

9:33am Friday 1st February 2013 in Comedy By Charles Hutchinson

ON the snowiest night of the winter, it was not the time to be out in our sheds.

Instead, John Shuttleworth was warming up an ironic term, given the weather for a tour that will bring him to the Grand Opera House in York on March 6.

Last Fridays show was a loosening exercise for Sheffield actor and songwriter Graham Fellows long-running comic creation, the former sweet factory security guard turned clubland one-man band who mistakes platitudes for profundity and finds endless fascination in the mundane.

Removing a shard of mint from his mouth, Shuttleworth set about setting his world to rights as he pontificated on the dilemmas and perplexities of everyday life for an antediluvian man in a car coat and cream slacks.

Like America, Shuttleworth himself is an irony-free zone, although that is part of Fellowss joke. Shuttleworth is so serious that he is funny, especially when rallying the audience to sing along with his cheery songs on his misbehaving bells-and-whistles organ.

Ostensibly, Out Of Our Sheds is a forum for Shuttleworth to contemplate which is better, city life or country living, supermarket or village shop? Or should you just sit in your shed and count the cobwebs? Or so the brochure said.

In reality, the two sets were dominated by delightfully daft if disconnected songs, such as a pastiche of Nirvanas Smells Like Teen Spirit, and the patter in between was surprisingly diffident, unfocused and in need of more rapport with the somewhat quiet full house.

There have been better, funnier Shuttleworth shows and there will be again, probably in York next month, by which time the material will be match-fit.

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Review: John Shuttleworth, Out Of Our Sheds, Pocklington Arts Centre