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Sean Hughes: A comic’s comic who shunned the big time for the intimacy of gigging in clubs

Aged 24 in 1990 Hughes became the youngest to win the Edinburgh festival comedy award: Getty
Aged 24 in 1990 Hughes became the youngest to win the Edinburgh festival comedy award: Getty

Sean Hughes, who has died aged 51, never became a household name but among comedians and comedy fans he was rightly revered – both in Britain and his native Ireland – as one of the pioneers of modern stand-up. His one-man show, A One Night Stand with Sean Hughes, showed that stand-up comedy could be more than just a string of gags. In his hands, it became a proper art form, as subtle and revealing as theatre or autobiography.

Hughes was born in 1965 in London, to Irish parents who took him back to Ireland when he was five. He was raised in Dublin, first in Whitehall, then in Firhouse, shook off his Cockney accent and started performing comedy with friends at school and college. After supporting a few bands in Dublin, he went to London to try his luck on the alternative-comedy circuit.

Hughes was always more interested in personal observation than hand-me-down one-liners. A One Night Stand... was a slice of life which crystallised his early years. A monologue about a lovelorn Smiths fan waiting in his bedsit for a call from his girlfriend that never comes, it inspired a new generation of comedians to explore their own experiences, rather than just cracking formulaic jokes about Margaret Thatcher.

The show went on to win the Perrier Award at the 1990 Edinburgh fringe festival. Aged just 24, he remains the youngest ever winner of that prestigious prize. A surreal Channel 4 series – Sean’s Show – soon followed (almost as groundbreaking as his stage show). He then spent six years on BBC2’s Never Mind the Buzzcocks. Even in this routine panel show his surrealist wit shone through, but he never seemed entirely comfortable with small-screen fame, preferring the intimacy and immediacy of live stand-up. He wrote poetry and fiction, and a music column for The Guardian. One of his later one-man shows focused on his father’s death.

He is survived by an older brother and a younger brother. He never married or had children. Some of his best stand-up chronicled the challenges of single life. “There is no such thing as love,” he said, in one of his darker monologues, Alibis for Life. “It’s a fallacy, and if you’re looking for it you’ll do your head in for the rest of your life,” he said. “Basically, all love can ever be is a matter of tolerance or loneliness.” Some reports suggest he died of cirrhosis of the liver. “I knew I was drinking too much when I had to be put out at a party,” he once quipped. “I don’t mean I was asked to leave. My jacket was on fire.”

Did he ever top A One Night Stand...? Probably not, but most comics will never do a show that good. Even if he only created one great show, that’s one more than most artists ever manage. “Everyone grows out of their Morrissey phase – except Morrissey,” he said. That show was his Hatful of Hollow.

As well as stretching the boundaries of stand-up, Hughes opened the door for a whole host of innovative Irish comics. Graham Norton, Patrick Kielty, Ardal O’Hanlon and Dara O’Briain have all followed in his footsteps, enjoying the mainstream success he could have had, if he’d ever really wanted it. “I have no interest in being a personality – I don't even like the word celebrity,” he told The Independent. “My interests are writing novels and acting, and doing stand-up and getting ideas across. I’m quite a serious man.”

Sean Hughes, comedian, born 10 November 1965, died 16 October 2017