GRAHAM Fellows, creator of Sheffield’s sage man of song and life-skills tips John Shuttleworth, is thinking equally about a converted church and sheds at present.

On the one hand, Graham is undertaking the renovation and conversion of a church on Rousay, a hilly Orkney island in the north of Scotland.

On the other, he is on his travels with alter ego Shuttleworth’s latest show, Out Of Our Sheds, whose progress around Britain brings him to the Grand Opera House, York, next Wednesday (March 6).

The Press caught up with Graham as he was about to catch the Rousay ferry after a day of Orkney paperwork. “I’ve been running around trying to finalise my grant,” he says. “Overseeing the renovation is very unromantic compared to my original thoughts on the project.”

Then he perks up. “Having said that,” he says, suddenly as positive as Shuttleworth, his philosopher of the mundane, “It’s going to be wonderful and a big success with a recording studio and space for recuperation and it’ll be available for hire.”

Then Graham thinks again. “At least I hope it’ll become a success as a recording studio, but there are studios now closing down or turning into yoga centres. Hopefully people will find it appealing to record in the quiet up here because there’s nothing to do on this island!” he says.

“There’s no ferry on a Sunday in the winter and the last ferry daily to get back to the mainland is at 6.05pm…but it will be a lovely place to record and maybe that might be the only way some people might visit the Orkneys.”

Graham says that “to be honest I come up here to be on my own”, but then he has to return to the world of John Shuttleworth, the former sweet factory security guard turned organ-playing club act.

In Out Of Our Sheds, Graham has John “venturing beyond the garden gates to tread the mean streets of Britain and pondering which is better: city life or country living”. Where does John fit into modern Britain, Graham? “Because he doesn’t really talk about anything, he fits in pretty well!” he says. “I think we’re living in a vacuous world, though John is more optimistic. His world is pretty small; he likes the little detail, and that’s how most people talk, people of that age.”

On the tour’s opening night at a snowy Pocklington Arts Centre on January 25 – since when the show has considerably livened up, says Graham – John removed a “shard” of mint from his mouth as he sat down at his organ. Only John would use such a word… “Actually, my dad had a scientific background and would use words like ‘shard’. That’s why John’s language is a mixture of the mundane and the fantastical,” Graham says.

“I’m not scientific like dad, and nor is John, but John’s fascinated by dust!”

The show, as it turns out, is not related to its Out Of Our Sheds title. “You get the idea for a title months before you do the show because you need to publicise it, and I liked that title,” says Graham.

“John doesn’t really talk about sheds, which is a bit remiss of him, though to be honest there’s not a lot to say about sheds. I guess the show is about the things all the other Shuttleworth shows have been about: the minutiae of life…with songs.”

Songs old and new – Shuttleworth’s back catalogue runs to 120 now – will feature, and just as the Nirvana pastiche Smells Like White Spirit was the big hit of his last tour, so Here Comes Midweek (“I’m so excited, I can hardly speak”) is the new show’s new favourite.

Some things don’t change, however. John still has his trademark coat and slacks. “He’s got through three coats over the years; this one’s done ten years, the one before lasted ten and the first one five,” says Graham.

“I’ve just got a new pair of slacks. I used to get them from charity shops but they seem to have disappeared, so now my sister gets them from a catalogue. But I agonised over the colour – faun – which I’ve only worn at the last few shows. I wore the old ones at Pocklington.”

Looking at the year ahead, Graham’s main plan is to “get the Rousay studio up and running” and he also intends to take another of his alter egos, rock musicologist and suspended media studies lecturer Brian Appleton, to the Edinburgh Fringe with his as-yet-untitled new historical show.

“I’ll tour that show to small theatres and arts centres in the autumn, and I’m hoping for a new John Shuttleworth series on the radio too,” he says.

In the meantime, interview over, Graham has a ferry to catch.

John Shuttleworth, Out Of Our Sheds, Grand Opera House, York, Wednesday, March 6, 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or atgtickets.com/york