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Crikey! Sean Hughes RIP

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Aged 51. Cause of death, cirrhosis of the liver. Incredibly sad.

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  1. Very sad to hear about Sean Hughes’s death. He was a brilliant comedian. I’ve followed his career since our paths crossed in our early days in London. We were on speaking terms after he picked on me during a gig and he always looked out for me and my friends, sticking us on many a guest list, tipping us off about the odd secret gig and often turning up in the audience at other comedians’ shows. He was a big music fan and we used to see him at as many music gigs as comedy shows. He recorded with Cathal Coughlan as Bubonique a Fatima Mansions offshoot. His early stuff hasn’t necessarily aged well but he’s done some of his best work since dropping out of the TV limelight. My wife and I always went to see him when at the Edinburgh Festival or if he played Dublin and his shows were always intelligent, thought provoking and mostly funny as hell. Try to see his “Life Becomes Noises”, show – his reflection on his father’s death. A brilliant show. I’ll miss him.

  2. A great shame. He was genuinely funny and hit all the right spots for me – being both silly and serious at the same time. With his infatuation with Morrissey and buglers who would leave him things he was delightfully different. He always seemed to be enjoying himself as well which I like.

    A sad day.

    • The fat lady has, sadly, put that chicken away for the final time now.

      I saw him, pre-fame, in a pub in Salford in ’88ish, on what from memory was a Carling-sponsored multiple-act tour showcasing emerging comedy talent. I can’t remember a single one of the other acts, but his repeated deployment of ‘Put that chicken away, Missus!’ absolutely brought the house down, and it remained a touchstone amongst my mates and I for years. It’s still something I murmur absent-mindedly to myself when the situation demands it.

      Very saddened to see him go, and so young too.

          • Tom Hodgkinson at The Idler also seems to agree. This is from today’s Idler emailer

            “It was very sad to hear about the early death at 51 of the brilliant comedian Sean Hughes. I was a fan in the nineties and he contributed a few pieces to the Idler. We became pals and went out to gigs together. He could be very entertaining company but could also be pretty aggressive: for example, he was not always pleasant to fans who came up to say hello. When I last saw him, around ten years ago, he was mumbly and angry and said he was on prescription pills of some sort. It was a shame he could not find happiness. This piece by Michael Hann, also a former friend of Sean’s, in The Guardian describes exactly my own experience of the man.”

            Booze can bring out the worst in all of sometimes.

            • But the Hann article seems to want to go beyond that. It’s not just saying he was a difficult and sometimes unpleasant person. It seems to alluding to something worse.

              “It’s also worth noting that it is hard to get people to talk publicly about Hughes, precisely because so many people had bad experiences with him, especially women.”

              “It was as if he was afraid of intimacy, and this meant women would experience the absolute worst of him. No one I speak to will go into specifics – it seems not to be something people want to revisit – but dark mutterings among women who had relationships with him floated around like an ugly cloud, becoming visible again after his death.”

              Perhaps I’m being unfair on Hann, but I sort of feel like if someone has just died and you want to accuse them of something when they’re not there to defend themselves, you at least do them the courtesy of making it clear what you’re actually accusing them of.

  11. Very sad. Loved Sean’s Show. Last time I saw him on telly (celebrity Pointless I think) I thought how ill he looked. Still a shock though. Only two years older than me. Very, very sad.

  16. Very sad news. I saw him performing in London in the 80s – always thought he came across better live than on TV. And then there was Jah Wobb’s ‘slap’ on Never the the Buzzcocks …

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