John Shuttleworth: Celebrating Mediocrity!

Yes Indeed, Victoria
For those of you not familiar with John, he is a character played by Gordon Fellows*, a musician - of sorts - and raconteur, basically a kind-hearted individual but Dearie Me!  He has no self-awareness.  I'm not sure how well his humour translates across the Pond, nor indeed on the Continent.  Conrad liked it.

John, in trademark leather jacket

     John's act consists of celebrating or commiserating all the small things that go to make up life, plus a lot of poking gentle fun at the folk of Hebden Bridge**, and nearby town Mytholmroyd which he consistently called "Missilethrod", although to be fair any non-English speaker would probably be stumped by it as well. He began with a bit of technical waffle, about the sound mix and the lighting, teasing Graham the sound engineer:

Graham's gear.  Yes, a bit blurry, but it's for sound so that's okay

     Now, this whole tour rests upon the letter "D".  

As seen here -

     Wee Ken, John's agent, should have had the promotional material printed with "A Weekend To Remember".
     Ken got it wrong, didn't he?  Instead John's now trying to flog promotional merchandise with "A Wee Ken To Remember".  So his theme for the night was two-fold: recounting tales of memorable weekends, and dishing the dirt on Wee Ken (as retribution).

Wee Ken Weekend Flask

     Amongst his tales of torrid-free weekends, John mentioned both the National Pencil Museum and the National Bulb Museum.
     You guessed correctly, Conrad the arch-pedant did look both of them up.  The Pencil Museum is a real thing:

Is there a Pen Museum? <crosses fingers>

     The Bulb Museum, FYI, is a product of Mr. Fellow's imagination.
     Now, Conrad knew none of John's songs before this concert, so they were all entirely new.  We kicked off with a song of Kagoul versus Fleece, John plaintively mourning the passing of the kagoul's day, before passing on to "Community Leader":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKn2dHjvPRw
     - and there's a link to it on You-Bend, as John misunderstands it.  Then we had "Relatives in Rotherham", all about being obliged to visit relatives John cannot stand; sorry no Youtube link as I can't find it there (out of sight round the bend?)
     In between songs John would step to the front of the stage to regale us with weekends to remember, and also about Wee Ken.

The stage.  "No flash photography" said the staff.  So no live photos of John.

     And the one that made me laugh out loud then and now, still, was a tale of John's drawing of a sedan chair in class J3, which was excellent even it was traced, and that of the boy sat next to him, which was awful
     "It looked like a chicken," said John, causing your scribe to laugh madly.  "I don't know why, because it were traced as well."
     

      -and the cleaning products above were also mentioned - except that when they dwelt under the sink, a household only ever had one or the other, never both.
     Which is a bit of a coincidence as I was trying to explain about Vim to Katie earlier in the week, and she'd never heard of it - which means John has to be right and she's only ever had Ajax as a cleaner in her kitchen!  Life imitating art, truly.
     Then it was back to music and "Two Margarines":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K4cEocL5kI
     As I said, a celebration of mediocrity - I bet this situation is a familiar one, we've all done it at times, opening a second tub of margarine before the first one is finished, but only John can make sweet music out of it.

"Two margarines on the go -

It's a nightmare scenario"

     Then it was on to the almost-dark "Mingling with Mourners", about the avaricious folks who hang around food at the wake, in order to be first at the quiche:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRAlLCFOfJI
     Then it was "I Can't Go Back To Savoury Now"-:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8eh72REd_s
     Hopefully this will never happen to you, gentle reader.  Imagine it:

"That shepherd's pie was stunning,

But I'm halfway through my pudding.

No, I can't to back to savoury now."

     The horror!  The horror!

     One thing that impressed Conrad was that John, as with BOOJUM!, does not swear in his performance - the raciest tale he had to tell was about "Eggs and Gammon", where Wee Ken poisons his tent thanks to wind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx5PN_xrBmA
     There you go, the Youbend link.

Wee Ken's card

     John claims to send tapes of all his best songs to famous musicians and bands, although none have come back to him, and his idea of "famous" is not very up-to-date - The Lighthouse Family, John, are not dangerously contemporary.  Also, if you're sending tapes then they probably don't have the necessary -
     - oh never mind.  It keeps him happy!

What's a Shuttlworth?
Quite a lot, actually

* Better known to people of a certain age as "Jilted John"
** Entirely logical as this is where the gig was.