Faithful Betty will yearn for my complex, funny friend Sean Hughes

SEAN’S dog. Her name is Betty, the successor to Bill and Sweep. Bill used to jump over broom handles like a small pony, and Sweep shared a home and many happy years with Betty. Sean had to have Sweep put down late last year and it broke his heart. Then it was just him and Betty.

He once told me that he liked dogs more than people because, he said, if you locked your dog and your wife in the boot of your car for a couple of hours and then returned, only your dog would be pleased to see you.

Quick to point out that that was actually another comedian’s joke, Sean loved that line because, for him, it summed up the simple loyalty of man’s best friend.

Sean’s relationships with humans were complicated and frequently fraught – though he brought nothing but joy and occasional chaos to my life – but his dogs gave him the unconditional, simple love and approval that he demanded and rarely got from people.

After the initial shock at the news of his untimely death last week, my thoughts quickly turned to Betty.

I suppose I should have thought about Sean’s brothers first, but after Billy (McGrath, comedy producer, mutual friend and a lifelong supporter and defender of Sean), for me, it was all about Betty.

She is an elderly lady, you see, and I just couldn’t imagine how she could be re-homed or how she could manage at all without her beloved master.

And I didn’t want to ask anyone what would become of Betty now because I presumed she would be put to sleep, and in my aching sadness of the past week, I didn’t need any more.

But she wasn’t put to sleep. Betty was at Sean’s funeral, in the front row of the crematorium.

There were two Doctor Whos there and they both had to stand, but Betty had a VIP position right up the front. And like her master, she slept through the ceremony.

Well, apart from one moment: during Sean’s brother Martin’s magnificent, honest eulogy, Betty let out a yawny howl of protest. I think it was at the bit when Martin said Sean was difficult. ‘Betty obviously doesn’t agree,’ he conceded. It was one of many laughs on a day of many more tears.

She is being re-homed, as it turns out. Sean’s friend Miriam, who he met through their shared love of dogs, is taking her in. And Betty already knows Miriam, which is great and she will be loved and spoilt rotten, which is better. And she was fine in the crematorium because she’d never been there before and because she had no way of knowing that her best friend was in that strange wooden box or that all those people there were crying and laughing because they wouldn’t see him again.

But the pub afterwards was a different story. Betty knows that pub, you see; it’s just down the road from her home in Crouch End and she was frequently there with her master. And the whole time, she kept looking around for Sean.

IF you know dogs, then you’d know that Betty was bewildered and on edge, waiting and wondering where Sean was, still hoping he’d walk through the door. And in that, I can promise you that she wasn’t alone.

I never wanted a dog. But like a lot of parents, I ended up with one anyway. And I don’t quite know how they do it, but dogs bring out the best in humans.

Maybe their unquestioning worship sets us an example – though I think it just makes us happier people. I’m not sure Sean was a very happy person but he was a very happy dog owner.

When my own dog was critically ill at the start of this year, Sean was full of sympathy and concern – even though we were at his mother’s funeral when I told him how sick Denis was. The next time we spoke, the first thing he asked me was how the dog was.

He was very good with dogs and maybe not so good with people.

And I won’t look around for him every time I walk into a bar now like Betty always will. But God, that doesn’t mean I won’t miss every complicated, brilliant bit of him.