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I’d had a fun hour or so researching my guests for tonight’s podcast. I’d been thinking of guests to fill the remaining slots and was wondering about trying to tempt some older comics in by pointing out that no guest on any of my podcasts had ever died. Maybe it made you immortal. I’d joked about this hubristically on the last series too. Why didn’t I keep my big mouth shut?
I’d been away from the computer for a bit and when I got back I saw a tweet about my podcast with “the late Sean Hughes”. That made no sense. I assumed he had been tardy for some gig or job, but why would someone phrase that in such a weird way. Then saw my timeline was starting to fill with people full of shock, sorrow and admiration. This couldn’t be true. It must be a mistake.
But it wasn’t.
This one has hit me hard. Sean and I were not big buddies. We met a few times over the years at gigs or on TV shows or in Edinburgh. But we had the easy going camaraderie that many comics share. I’d talked with Ed Byrne about this. You don’t see each other for months or years, but when you do, you’re straight into solid and easy conversation, like no time has passed at all. Because of shared experience. Because you like each other. Because comedians come from all kinds of backgrounds, but a few twats excepted (and even they usually start out ok) are good or at least worthwhile or interesting people.
And so though I’d only see him when I saw him, Sean feels like a close friend. Because our shared experience is maybe more shared than others. We were on TV at a similar time and off TV at a similar time. We struggled a bit in the early part of the century to work out what we wanted to do and then found our own way of doing stuff. Sean much more successfully than me, carving out a career as a better than decent actor and a great writer and someone silly enough to
appear on Celebrity Come Dine With Me and serve the same dish for every course to the chagrin of Duncan Norvelle. I love that he subverted stuff from within, like when Spike Milligan was on Blankety Blank. He could have just said no (as I did to Come Dine With Me) or done it and played along (which would have been my other choice). But instead he seemingly innocently turned it into his own thing. Subversion is better than stepping away. The key to comedy is yes, more than no.
And for a long time we had similar luck (whether you see it as good or bad) with relationships and wondering where we were going in our personal life. Sean saw me doing a joke about how Maxine Carr had managed to find someone to marry her and yet I remained on the shelf and told me he did a similar line about another abhorrent person (I forget. Hitler?) who had more romantic success than he did.
We understood the same loneliness, the difficulty of settling down, the romantic notions of finding the one, our own culpability in our failures to find the one, the allure of a night on the booze and waking up with a stranger, the poetry of the gutter, the gutteryness of the poet.
We trod the same path and it was always a pleasure to see him. I had fun with him as a guest on my podcast. Was that the last time I saw him? Surely not. But I can’t think now of when that might otherwise have been. Because I just assumed we’d bump into each other in a green room or bar and have a chat about the fickle nature of fame or how to create our own content or which comedians were selling out this week. Before we did the things that we might once have considered selling out.
So today’s news hit me hard. I didn’t know he’d been ill and even if I had I would have assumed he’d bounce back.
I don’t cry much any more but on the train to London I got a bit teary, I wept for him and I wept for myself. Because if he can die at 51 then I can die at 50. The story unfinished, the jokes unspoken, leaving behind those who you care for and love and those that you would have cared for and loved.
Mainly though I was angry for the tragedy and the unfairness of life. The first of the gang to die. No more chats, no more laughs. It’s just so bleak. And terrifying. And you either give up or make the most of what time you’ve got. Or vow to make the most of the time you’ve got and slip back into the complacent belief that you are immortal (with caveats that you don’t really completely believe).
I don’t know if he knew the impact he’d had or how upset people would be. It never even crossed my mind that he’d die, so I had no idea how much the passing of this in some ways loose acquaintance would hit me. I didn’t feel in the mood for comedy or performance and yet comedy and performance were necessary and important. I clumsily dedicated the show to Sean. I clumsily did the shows. My soul was punch-drunk from this sucker punch.
My guests Ellie and Rachel were great and made up for my bumbling inadequacies.
The world continues to feel alien and unreal, like it’s a game of Civilisation II that has gone on too long and the player is bored and making shit happen just for shits and mild giggles.
I’ve only been away from London for three months and they’ve made some changes already. I don’t really approve of the orange sky. Blue/grey was fine guys. You’ve made the place look like an 80s New Romantic video. Fuck it, on a day like today the sky can be a different colour and there’s nothing you can do about it. Someone was serving the same food up for every course and subverting from within.
