Sean Hughes Stands Up

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“Let’s talk about the elephant in the room,” begins Sean Hughes, “I’ve put on a bit of weight.” But it’s not a beer gut, because the British-Irish comedian has recently quit booze – “quit everything in fact,” he reveals. A clean-up probably comes none too soon for the late Bill Hicks’ former drinking buddy, though perhaps his confidence and flow are taking time to find stimulant-free balance.

I’m all in favour of standups eschewing much of their prepared material in favour of bantering with the crowd, but Hughes’ ad-libs are of erratic quality tonight. Beginning by brazenly suggesting to a 17 year-old at the show with his dad that he shouldn’t be here but instead “fucking someone against a skip” sets an edgy tone, but his half-hearted efforts to noise-up an aircraft engineer and a jeweller in the front row are tame. Granted, luck isn’t really with Hughes tonight – when one lady disappears to the toilet he tries that old chestnut of grilling her boyfriend for intimate details of her life to freak her out with when she comes back, but the guy isn’t especially forthcoming, and his girlfriend takes an age to return. Still – Hughes should salvage better laughs out of the joke going wrong. After having counted down for about half the set to the point when he “fucks off,” he ends up overrunning by about 10 minutes in search of a decent out, finally settling for a garbled routine about how sobering up has killed his libido. By most other comics’ standards this was still an entertaining show, but by Hughes’ own it has to rank as poor.