Cream of comedy world bid farewell to Sean Hughes
Irish stand-up’s wish for a joyful funeral is granted
THE cream of the comedy world turned out to pay its respects at the funeral of Irish comedian Sean Hughes yesterday.
The stand-up – who appeared on BBC pop quiz Never Mind The Buzzcocks for six years – passed away last week.
Famous faces, including Bob Mortimer, Johnny Vegas, David Baddiel and Jack Dee, joined the comedian’s family and friends to say their final farewells.
Mourners spilled out of Islington Crematorium in north London yesterday afternoon.
The funeral took place a week after Hughes died, aged 51, in north London’s Whittington hospital, where he had been born.
According to reports, Hughes’s death was caused by cirrhosis of the liver.
Celebrities, including Richard Herring, Stewart Lee, Omid Djalili and Arthur Smith attended the funeral, as did Phill Jupitus, who starred alongside Hughes on Never Mind The Buzzcocks.
The service featured emotional and sometimes humorous eulogies from friends and family members, including Hughes’s two brothers, Alan and Martin.
An order of service marked the occasion as ‘A Celebration of Life’ and featured Hughes’s own poetry, as well as quotes from his favourite writers, including Seamus Heaney, and music from The Smiths and Lily Allen.
In a poignant poem about his own death that he wrote 13 years ago, the comic had revealed that he wanted to have his ashes ‘scattered in a bar’.
In a poem entitled ‘Death’, from his 1994 ‘Sean’s Book’, the comedian wrote: ‘I know how boring funerals can be. I want people to gather, meet new people, have a laugh, a dance, meet a loved one. I want people to have free drink all night.’
Following the service, mourners were invited to sign a book of condolence before the wake at a nearby pub.
In 1990, Hughes was 24 when he became the youngest winner of the main prize at the Perrier Comedy Awards, now known as the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, for his stand-up show A One Night Stand With Sean Hughes.
He also appeared in TV programmes, including Coronation Street and The Last Detective, and in Alan Parker’s 1991 film The Commitments. Hughes returned to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2007 after a seven-year break. In 2015, he joined the cast of the Olivier Award-winning production of The Railway Children.
Away from the stage and screen, Hughes was also a writer and had penned two collections of prose and poetry, including Sean’s Book. He wrote best-selling novels The Detainees and It’s What He Would Have Wanted.
Actress and impressionist Ronnie Ancona, 49, told the Mail: ‘Sean was sprinkled with this magic fairy dust and was a true artist. He had this extraordinary charisma and was a brilliant comic.
‘When he did his lines and jokes, they were extraordinary, like somebody would be quoting a classic Woody Allen joke, and you would think, “Oh my God, there is something special.”
‘He had this sparkling wit and charisma. There was a magical humanity about him and I think in a way that was hard because it comes with a bit of a flip side.’
Ancona added: ‘He was one of the brilliant, brilliant Irish geniuses. He was a poet.
‘He was a James Joyce and Beckett character. He had a raw passion. He was a very beautiful guy as well. He had these fantastic eyes and a was a real kind of heart-throb.
‘When he first came on the scene, you thought, “How can that be possible and how can somebody have all that in spades?”’
‘He was beautiful, a real heart-throb’