Interview: John Shuttleworth, comedian, musician

Jilted John stopped Graham Fellows playing Hamlet! That's the claim being made by the 51-year-old master of character comedy best known as Radio 4 favourite and Sheffield's finest synthesizer player and twaddle talker, John Shuttleworth.

John Shuttleworth's change of rolls

Stand-up comedian Graham Fellows discusses the life of alter ego John Shuttleworth with Viv Hardwick.

A London School of Economics study reported last week that the key to a happy marriage is sharing the household chores. In which case, The Shuttleworths must be the happiest couple in radioland and certainly the most whimsically funny.

Returning for a new series, John Shuttleworth's focus of interest is, as ever, the domestic arena and he rarely strays further than next door where his useless, parochial agent Ken Worthington (and, oh, they do exist) lives.

Graham Fellows plays all the characters superbly, caressing the vocal range from falsetto to soprano, embracing personality traits from studied patience (Mary) to shiftily incompetent (Ken). But it is John, with his musical elegies to the trivial and his beadily obsessive eye for commonplace detail, who knits this community together. His first song is a lament to broadcasters who fail to give the www opening to a website address - "They might have changed it to yyy," he reasonably opines in his nasal singing voice. He is a magnificent everyman, the hero of his own daily life. I can imagine that if Mary was struck down by a debilititating illness, John would find both tragedy and triumph as he rustled up a bowl of soup or plumped up her pillows.

Devotees of John Shuttleworth (aka Graham Fellows), his wife Mary and his next-door-neighbour-cum-entirely-useless-manager Ken Worthington will already be gearing up for the return to the airwaves of the greatest retired security guard turned singer/songwriter there has ever been. For those who have never encountered The Shuttleworths before, it will be an experience akin to plunging into 24 or Lost without any previous series knowledge - entirely incomprehensible. But don't let that put you off, for this is one of the cleverest character comedies on radio, on a par with Count Arthur Strong and Ed Reardon's Week. This week John encounters the thrilling highs followed by the angst-ridden lows of using...no, not drugs, but eBay. Listen to this and the functions of a modern electric toaster will take on an enchanting hue for the rest of your life, thanks to Mr and Mrs Shuttleworth. It's great to have them back.

Graham Fellows: What I see in the mirror

Graham Fellows, comedian, aka John Shuttleworth: 'A lot of people become actors because they're not particularly happy with the way they look.'