John Shuttleworth, A Wee Ken To Remember, Harrogate Theatre, February 10; West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, February 17; Hull Truck Theatre, March 26

JOHN Shuttleworth, the good-natured organist, singer, car sweet devotee and dispenser of homespun advice from Sheffield, is on his travels once more in A Wee Ken To Remember.

Jaunty retired security guard John and his perky, errant Yamaha keyboard will be visiting Harrogate Theatre on February 10, the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, on February 17 and Hull Truck Theatre on March 26 as he resumes a tour that found its legs in the autumn.

John Shuttleworth, should you need reminding, is the retro comedy character creation of Graham Fellows, who has gone from punk spoof Jilted John in 1978 to jolted John in 2014, and all because his agent, 1973 New Faces flop Ken Worthington, has dropped a clanger, or an alphabetical letter to be precise.

“John wanted to talk about his favourite past weekends, so the tour poster should have said A Weekend To Remember, but Ken left off the ‘d’,” says Graham. “I worked very hard to get that title. I knew there was a pun in there somewhere and I got there in the end.”

Consequently, Ken’s cock-up has led the mild but very temporarily bitter John to reflect on Ken’s past in his latest show, as well as on the big things in life.

“There’s quite a lot about death in this one, as there always is,” says Graham. “There’s a little bit of a sub-plot with a couple of phonecalls to Ken and to Mary [John’s wife] that don’t go well.”

A Wee Ken To Remember has introduced a handful of new songs to the Shuttleworth repertoire of Pet Shop Old Boy-style classics; one even celebrating the wonders of Polyfilling a window sill at the weekend.

“The song that’s been going down the best is Early Tea, the rock’n’roll song that I did on Radio 4’s Loose Ends last autumn,” says Graham.

“There’s also one called Visiting Time, about hospital visits. Alan, John’s opera-singing friend, has been stuck in hospital and John has been enjoying visiting him every night , maybe enjoying it too much... but thankfully Alan’s better now.”

Not every song works, as Graham admits.

“I wrote this song that was just a bit too clever, where I’d read online about a broad mind and narrow hips swapping places and I thought that was a nice metaphor for getting old, so I wrote what I thought was a clever song, but it didn’t go down well, so that’s out of the show,” he says.

“You don’t really know if it will work until you do it live. I did one like Alfie Boe in the last show, but I think that was a bit Richard Stilgoe, the aspiring songwriter in me.”

The songwriter in Graham Fellows has produced Jilted John and John Shuttleworth classics alike, leading Graham to ponder whether he might present something a little different in York one day soon.

“Maybe when I next come to York, I might do An Evening With Graham Fellows,” he says.

“I’d probably do Jilted John, Going Steady and The PaperBoy Song; they kind of work unplugged, and there are a few John Shuttleworth songs that were originally my songs, like She Lives In A Shop Though She Used To Live In Barnsley and You’re Like Manchester, with a pay-off line, ‘you’ve got strange ways’.”

• John Shuttleworth, A Wee Ken To Remember, Harrogate Theatre, February 10; West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, February 17; Hull Truck Theatre, March 26. Box office: Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk; Leeds, 0113 213 7700 or wyp.org.uk; Hull, 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk