IS this the end for mild-mannered former security guard John Shuttleworth, Sheffield's car-coated king of the cabaret circuit, DIY buff and grey people's champion?

His latest tour is called One Foot In The Gravy, a pun maybe but one with a portentous hint about the future. "This could be the last time," says John's creator, 41-year-old Yorkshireman Graham Fellows, who will performing his Shuttleworth act at Harrogate Theatre tonight.

"The tour title has a feeling of finality about it, and this tour is certainly going to be the last one for John for now.

"In a nice way, I've had enough of him: it feels like I've said all I can with this character at the moment. There are other things I want to explore."

Predominant among those "other things" for this character comedian will be Brian Appleton, the full-time bitter rock musicologist and part-time know-all college lecturer in media studies in deepest Newcastle-under-Lyme. The life of Brian will be expanding, following his introduction to Fellows' live shows.

"I'll be taking Brian's new show, Let's Look At Sound, to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer. He'll be looking at sound, of course, and be tied up in domestic problems involving his aromatherapist girlfriend," says Graham, who has cornered the market in creating strangely loveable, humourless but humorous failures.

BBC Radio 4, always a champion of Shuttleworth's trials and tribulations, has signed up Fellows for a September series entitled Brian Appleton's History Of Rock'n'Roll. Already two of the 15-minute episodes are in the can, with the remaining four to be recorded over two nights in front of a live audience in a change from Fellows' usual painstaking home-studio recording technique.

"Maybe I just need a bit of a rest from that. I'd really like to do an album of new songs; just songs, straight songs. I'm 41 now, and so far all I've done is comedy voices and comic songs as John Shuttleworth and punk outcast Jilted John," he says. "I'd like to have doors creaking and old people coughing on a record!"

More immediately, both Brian Appleton and John Shuttleworth will be singing songs on the One Foot In The Gravy tour. Shuttleworth's main concerns, meanwhile, will be the environment and that ubiquitous garment, the fleece.

The environment first. "With all this foot and mouth, John believes meat will become a thing of the past, and so will gravy, but gravy will still be relevant because flooding turns water gravy-coloured," says Graham. "So, John will be giving advice on what to do in the apocalypse."

What about fleeces? "He'll talk a lot about them, and there's this great new song he does called Fleece The World, all about how the fleece has taken over from the kagoul." Fair enough, but will John be swapping his trademark car coat for this sartorial essential of the new age?

"No, he still wears the coat," says John. "He's like Tintin. He just doesn't look right if he changes his clothes."

Meanwhile, Shuttleworth devotees may like to know that John's au revoir is being marked by the imminent release of Blue John, a collection of early Shuttleworth recordings, on the Chic Ken label, and the book Honed Lyrics, published by Vanity Publishing at £5 and available only at gigs and through the website, www.shuttleworth.co.uk.

Look out, too, for the tour T-shirt, which bears a permanent gravy stain. How typically John Shuttleworth: out with neither a bang nor or a whimper but a gravy stain.

John Shuttleworth in One Foot In The Gravy, Harrogate Theatre, April 6 at 8pm; tickets £12.50 and £11.50 on 01423 502116. Newsflash: a new Shuttleworth date has been added at Leeds City Varieties Music Hall on May 23.