Back in the late 1990s I used to run into Sean Hughes all the time at parties. He was a Perrier Award-winning stand-up comedian and team captain on Never Mind The Buzzcocks who would go to the opening of an envelope, so long as it included a free drink. I was the Showbusiness Correspondent of the Evening Standard so I was often there too.
Sean usually had a fag in one hand and a drink in the other. He was often drunk, which seems to be what did for him in the end, the poor sod. Only 51 too, when he died this week, an event he foresaw in a rather wonderful poem:
“I want to be cremated
I want people to patch together, half truths. I want people to contradict each other I want them to say ‘I didn’t know him but cheers’ I want my parents there, adding more pain to their life. I want The Guardian to mis-sprint three lines about me or to be mentioned on the news Just before the ‘parrot who loves Brookside’ story.
I want to have my ashes scattered in a bar, on the floor, mingle with sawdust, a bar where beautiful trendy people
Will trample over me … again”
At that time, in the late 1990s, he rubbed shoulders with, but never seemed to be part of, the Britpop A-list who dominated the tabloids’ showbiz pages – Liam and Noel, Damon and Jarvis, Baddiel and Skinner, Meg (Matthews) and Fran (Cutler), Kate (Moss) and Sadie (Frost), Patsy (Kensit) and Davinia (Taylor). Sean was never quite on the A-list. He had the same level of fame, and he was seen at the same parties, but the paps weren’t as interested in Sean, perhaps because he didn’t have a celebrity girlfriend for them to snap. Consequently, he was occasionally reduced to talking to me.
Such was the case when we both found ourselves in a room at the ICA waiting to meet Madonna one night in November 1999.
Read full story at EveningStandard
