20th October 2001
By Janice Lawrence
Photograph Steve Pool
As a boy Sean Hughes was picked on at school and seen as the thick one. Now the quick-witted comedian has all the trappings of fame - including a celebrity stalker. Here he reveals why he has the last laugh.
Quite frankly Sean Hughes looks like the proverbial cat who has swallowed several pints of cream. The 35-year-old comedian who is best known for his role as the wise-cracking team captain on the quiz show, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, enjoys a verbal joust off-screen as much as relishes it. One mispronounced word upon my part has provoked the cocky, na-na-ni-nah-nah sarcasm of a fifth former, delighted he’s got one over on Miss. But fans of Hughes and his panel show persona are in for a disappointment. After nine series in which he’s appeared alongside Phill Jupitus and mark Lamarr, the comic has decided to quit the pop trivia show and seek pastures new.
“At the beginning I didn’t enjoy it much but then I got more into it. But I’ve just given in my notice. They’d asked me to do three more series, but I’ve agreed to do one more because I want to leave while I’m still in good humour with the programme.”
We are meeting in his north London local to discuss his role in the forthcoming ITV drama, The Last Detective, co-starring Peter Davison. If all goes well, the one-off drama may be optioned for a series. Certainly Hughes is surprisingly accomplished as Mod Lewis, Davison’s philosophising sidekick, and it would seem to mark a radical departure in his career. Yet while Hughes may be most famous for those TV appearances and his angst-laden comedy routines, his professional life has been vastly more eclectic than most of his comedy colleagues. As he himself is quick to point out, he already has seven films under his belt - The Commitments and The Butcher Boy to name but two - and has appeared in the West End play Art. But, in fact, he is proudest of the two novels he’s written, one of which, The Detainees, was, he says, a way of ‘exorcising’ his childhood.
Happy to wax lyrical about most topic, Hughes is altogether more reluctant when it comes to his early life. Born in London to what he terms rather vaguely ‘Irish working class Catholics’, his family - including two brothers - returned to Dublin when he was four, whereupon he moved schools several times. There was a particularly nasty spell with the Christian Brothers. ‘I got hit a bit and then left. It wasn’t a big deal.’ Outside of school hours he was bullied. ‘Most of my childhood I found unbearable,’ he says, pausing pint in hand as his replies become increasingly mumbled. ‘I was forced to make friends all the time and I always felt unsettled. In school I used to make the tough guys laugh by being rude and cheeky to the teachers. But outside I’d be frightened all the time. If you hang around with a gang and they’re bored they tend to pick on the weakest.’
Not a happy position to be in when by inclination you were, as Hughes recalls, one of life’s natural show-offs. Yet while his parents recognised their skinny child’s ‘look at me’ character, they continued to nurse modest aspirations for John, as he was then known. ‘The thought I was the thick one,’ he shrugs. It’s hard to believe that could have been anybody’s observation of the quick-witted Hughes. ‘I worked part-time in a supermarket and they’d have been happy for me to work my way up to head of the deli. I hated that lack of ambition. The way I see it I was brought up in a cul-de-sac and told not to jump over it. I did jump over it and ran like mad.
He was a teenager working in London one summer when he came across the Comedy Store. Determined to perform there he teamed up with a friend but just before leaving Ireland he says he ‘lost control’. ‘I went to see a shrink and said, “Look I’m getting the boat over to England and this is how I feel.” And she said, “No you’d better not go, you’d better have therapy for a couple of months.” But I knew if I did I’d be hiding under my bed for the rest of my life.’
Prescribed beta blockers to reduce stress, he ignored the psychiatrist’s advice and took the double act to London. It was all going well until his partner announced he was returning to Dublin. ‘I was stuck then; on my own and really frightened. I ended up in a squat smoking dope, signing on and singing Elvis Costello songs late into the night.’ It is only recently that he has begun to relax and that initial drive no longer dominates his life. ‘I used to have no life, but I’m better now - I like not working now.’
Financially he has all the trappings of wealth you suspect he’s always craved - the Victorian house, the gardener, the cleaner - and the silver BMW, not forgetting that most dubious indicator of success - a celebrity stalker. ‘She found out where I lived and used to hang around outside,’ he recalls, speaking publicly about the incident for the first time. ‘Then she sent me little notes saying things like, “See you in the pub as planned.” She did it for a year, then left me alone for three before it all began again.’ After she sent him a cassette of songs purporting to be about him, Hughes called the police. ‘You worry that someone delusional like that might shout rape so I asked the police to tell her to stop it.’
If his professional life is very much on track, his personal life seems altogether more shambolic. He has yet to live with anyone for long and maintains that he’s not sure he would ever want to. ‘I like living on my own. The idea of somebody else invading my space is quite nauseating. A relationship is confining - you can’t go off and do something on your own for two weeks because people tend to be clingy.’
To date, his longest relationship has been three years with a radio producer, but the couple split up a year ago. ‘I don’t want her back,’ he says somewhat defensively. ‘But I still think about her a lot. We actually tried to give it another go but friends said we were rowing for the last year. I hadn’t remembered that. It was like, “Were we?”‘ Have they become friends? ‘I’m friends - I’d just love to hang out and have a beer. But she says that she’s not ready for that and you have to respect that.’
There is a new woman - a photographer - but Hughes is reluctant to call her his girlfriend. ‘When you’re with a new person you think, “You don’t know me.” That’s why I’m hesitant. It’s one of those things that could finish tonight or go on forever. We’ve broken up once already.’ It’s not a promising portent when he eagerly scans a text message from another woman moments later.
He behaves like the textbook commitment phobe. ‘That would give the impression that I’m frightened of it - I’m not,’ he disputes. “I just don’t think it works and the idea of being in a close space with someone 24/7 I’d find very difficult.’
Yet there’s no disguising that beneath that trademark laconic delivery he’s a tricky character and given to extremes and possibly not the easiest of boyfriends. He agrees. ‘I’m moody but I’m honest with that - I don’t pretend.’ However, he adds that he no longer goes in for the one-night stands that characterised his life ten years ago.
You imagine that he would be best suited to an assertive woman. ‘It’s probably a reflection on me, but a lot of people I’ve been out with haven’t really challenged me,’ he concedes. ‘I don’t really like going out with famous people if you’re the supposedly famous person in the relationship it’s a bit wonky isn’t it?’
There was an 18-month relationship with Neighbours actress, Beth Buchanan. ‘Yes, but that was when I was 24,’ he snorts. ‘She came to live with me for about two weeks and I might as well have grabbed her bags when she arrived and thrown them out into the streets there and then. It didn’t work at all.’
Still these days confesses to odd broody moments. ‘I’m not a good boyfriend, but I think I’d be a good dad. I have a nice house and money and there are lots of kids being brought up in poverty.’ Does the prospect of being unmarried and childless at 40 concern him? In one of his comic routines, he complains that all his friends are married and when he calls to ask them out they say, ‘No, Sean, we’ve got our own children now.’ ‘But it doesn’t worry me,’ he says. ‘It’s something everyone can do and I’m not fussed about having an heir apparent.’
Yet finally he admits he is one of the world’s romantics. ‘I think that’s hindered me. I’ve always though that everything should be absolutely spot on and it never is. But I’m getting to the stage where I think that’s a romantic notion of the young.’
Would it be a fair assumption that Hughes thinks he hasn’t grown up yet? ‘No I haven’t actually,’ he reflects. ‘I still liked getting wrecked sometimes; where you have to blow out the day afterwards. That’s not something you do when you’re an adult, is it?”
Neither is being excited at owning an exploding pen. ‘You say to someone “I’ve lost your number” and then when they open the pen the cap explodes,’ he explains, collapsing into a fit of giggles. He spots my incredulous expression. ‘Everybody finds it funny!’
So far the comedian’s quest for his perfect woman has proved elusive. ‘We’re all works in progress,’ Hughes sighs, again serious. But one thing seems obvious; only women who find ‘exploding’ pens hilarious should apply.
