John Shuttleworth is a fictional singer-songwriter and radio presenter, created in 1985[1] and performed by English comedy actor and musician Graham Fellows.

The unfortunate gap between his actual musical talent and his steadfast belief in the possibility of his eventual pop super-stardom is the main source of the character's tragi-comedy.

[4] Appearing on BBC Radio 4's Midweek programme, on 3 June 2015, Fellows suggested that Shuttleworth was an amalgamation of the "very steady types" he had served beer to in a working men's club in Sheffield and the more eccentric characters he had met while showing fancy mice.

[5] Shuttleworth has fronted several radio and television series, usually supported by other characters, also voiced by Fellows, including agent / manager Ken Worthington ("TV's Mr. Clarinet Man"), who came last on the TV talent show New Faces in 1973, as well as John's wife Mary Shuttleworth, their two teenage children Darren and Karen, and Mary's friend Joan Chitty.

He also made a four-part TV series supposedly filmed by Worthington, 500 Bus Stops (the title being a parodying reference to Frank Zappa's 200 Motels), about a UK national tour thwarted very early when his beloved Y-reg Austin Ambassador broke down, but then continued by public transport.

The venues visited were invariably mundane and uninspiring, and situations experienced usually demoralising, but were optimistically dealt with as if they were defining moments in his career.

An operation by the Edale Mountain Rescue ensued to reach a walker who had fallen down the side of the cavern and was clinging to a tree above a 100 ft (30 m) drop.