IT HAS been well documented that Sean Hughes now wants to be taken seriously, and as I huffed, puffed, gasped and cursed my way up the myriad flights of stairs to the plush Dondass Street apartment in which he was residing during his assault on the Edinburgh Fringe, I could only marvel at the lengths to which Ireland s most successful comedy export was willing to go to in order to prove that he is now a serious novelist: the man was living in a fourth-storey garret.
My only previous encounter with Sean had been a year ago when he was promoting Snakes & Ladders, a film in which he stars alongside Wexford born table-stomper Pierce Turner. Since then he s been keeping a very low profile, appearing only in his role as team captain on the inevitable panel quiz Never Mind The Buzzcocks. I m very proud of that programme, but to be honest, the only reason I do that is for profile, he claims. I can go, Hey, look at me, I m still here! . And obviously there s huge amounts of money as well.
The Sean Hughes that greeted me at the entrance to his Scottish Tower Of Babel looked even worse than usual. Unshaven and bleary eyed, he arrived at the door wearing shorts, a t-shirt and stop that tittering at the back, please slippers.
Jesus, you look like shit, you must be really enjoying the festival! he exclaimed. C mon in, I ll make you a cup of tea, it might put some of the colour back in your cheeks. God, I feel so much better now that someone in Edinburgh actually looks more horrific than me. But I suppose I ve only been here two days, how long have you been here? . . .
Pottering around in the kitchen, he seems in sparkling form. Shortly before my arrival, he tells me, his dad had been on the phone to say that his boy s first novel, The Detainees, had been favourably reviewed in the Evening Herald. (Sean has published two books previously, Sean s Book and The Grey Area, both of which were collections of whimsical prose and poetry, as opposed to novels.)
Pausing in mid-stir, he asks me if I ve read his book. When I reply that I have, he wonders aloud what I thought of it. I tell him. The silence is deafening as he mulls over my short-but-incisive appraisal of a novel in which he has obviously invested a lot of time, effort and pride. It seems that Eh, quite good, is not, eh, quite good enough. Could I possibly expand?
I thought it was a very good story . . . I begin.
But?
But I didn t think it was particularly well written.
I suppose that s fair enough, comes the gloomy response, a bit too gloomy, it must be said, for a man who purports to care not a whit for the opinions of critics of any stripe or shade. The tea brewed, we retire to the living room, where Sean stretches out on the sofa, lights up a smoke and elaborates.
When people ask me how I react to criticism I always say that it s like water off a duck s back. But at the same time, if someone shows you a review where some critic has said that you re shit, it doesn t exactly put a spring in your step, he concedes.
The Hughes gait will have been less than sprightly in recent weeks, then, as one by one, the critics in other publications have been lining up to take pot-shots at a man who they perceive to have finally overstretched himself beyond all artistic limits. Certainly, some of this sniping can be attributed to common begrudgery, but a lot of it is fair. If the notes on the dust jacket are to be believed, The Detainees is a powerful, moving, blackly comic psychological thriller that will propel Sean Hughes to the front rank of contemporary fiction writers.
It isn t, and it won t.
Based in modern-day Dublin, the plot centres around John Palmer, a rich, successful, but profoundly unhappy antiques dealer. He shares a sexless marriage with the equally disturbed Michelle, a childhood friend who was, years previously, saved by John from a life of vice in Soho. Their lives are thrown into turmoil by the unexpected arrival home from America of Alan Redser Bulger, John s childhood tormentor and one of Michelle s first loves. Before long the two men s acquaintance is renewed, and John realises that little has changed since their schooldays. When Red begins making overtures to Michelle, something has to give, and John sets about exacting his carefully planned retribution.
As a yarn, The Detainees is compelling, often hilarious, but largely depressing. Sadly, it is the penmanship that sucks a biggie, a lemon of PopMart proportions. More ponderous than powerful, it plods when it should be moving swiftly along. The language is cliched, and the occasional twists in the plot are not so much predictable as signposted in screaming fluorescent neon. Despite this, the author remains upbeat, satisfied that the book will sell on its own merits and not because it was written by a world-famous comedian.
I think the comedy audience and the people who buy literature are different, he explains. And see, the interesting thing, and I m only harping on about this because it s fresh in my mind, is that the geezer who wrote the piece in the Herald said something along the lines of When I was approached to read a serious novel by a stand-up comic I winced . So when you win people over like that it s quite interesting, because the book isn t even that funny. It s nice when the Herald say nice things about it, and other people like it, but then there are the usual suspects who will give me a hammering over it. But I m happy with the result so that s the end of the story as far as I m concerned. I m certainly not going to lose any sleep over any bad reviews it might get.
Readers of The Detainees who are familiar with Hughes past work on both stage and page will soon become painfully aware that John Palmer and his creator have an awful lot in common. Sean, though, is quick to rubbish charges that his tome is in any way autobiographical.
People are bound to say that John is me, but that s unfair. You wouldn t say that about anyone else, would you? he argues indignantly.
The fact remains, however, that it is a fair assumption: both men are the same age, both are rich but have a very casual attitude towards wealth, both seem incapable of maintaining a serious relationship, both see themselves as victims, both like the same bands, both have the same pets . . .
Yeah, but he supports Arsenal, who I hate! Sean protests rather feebly.
Maybe so, but during the novel he develops an affinity for Crystal Palace, who Sean loves.
Okay, fair s fair, he laughs. Obviously you do write about what you know, but it s very important to me that people are aware that it s definitely not my life story. I got the idea for the book when I looked back at my own childhood and went What would have happened if . . .? . That s where the fiction comes into it. So obviously all the characters in it are an amalgamation of everyone I know.
The novel deals with the death of childhood; that s where the title comes into it. Both of the main characters, John and Red, have left Treetown, the place they grew up in, but they re still detained there because they have unfinished business. I love the idea of John not wanting to go back there, but being forced into it. That s what makes it interesting.
Does this mean that an unsavoury rogue from Sean s past has now been immortalised in print?
No, because Red would be based on about four or five people I knew from my childhood. They d get a great kick out of it if they thought I was writing about them. I was never bullied as child, because in school I was a complete dosser and became a sort of little mascot for the really hard guys. They really liked me. In my neighbourhood there was a gang going around who I would have had to avoid, but there was never really a bullying sense to it.
What about Sean s parents? In the novel, John Palmer s relationship with his is, at best, indifferent. Won t Mr and Mrs Hughes read it and think that their son is an ungrateful little bollocks?
Yeah, I was aware of that, agrees. I mean, you ve seen the early shows I did where I ripped into my parents, but there is that line in the novel where John says that he thinks he s allergic to his parents. He has that condition, condraphobia, which is a fear that anytime he s talking to his parents, there s better conversations going on elsewhere. I haven t got that relationship with mine, but it is that thing of dealing with your own experiences and then taking it on apace. I have that typical Irish relationship with my folks: I love them, but I don t particularly like them.
Sean is in Edinburgh to perform his latest one-man show, Alibis For Life. The previous night he had opened it in the city s George Square Theatre. It s not straight stand-up, but instead, a series of narratives broken up by music (composed by his good friend, the brilliant Cathal Coughlan BG), slides and blackouts. The setting is a neighbour s house which Sean is minding while the occupants are away trying to sort out various marital problems.
Despite a couple of minor technical hiccups, Sean is happy with the way the show went.
That was only the eighth time I ve done it, and I thought the audience last night was fucking brilliant, because I m not quite up to speed on it yet, he admits. It s the first show I ve done in a while. Obviously I m still talking about the failure of relationships, but where the slides and blackouts come in is that I was at this rock gig and it occurred to me that it was amazing the way that a band can have an emotion running for three minutes, then stop the song before starting on about something completely different.
Does this mean that Sean is no longer a stand-up comedian?
Well, I dunno, I think I m getting a bit old for the whole sheboodle, he responds sheepishly. It s funny actually, when I went to The Gilded Balloon on the night I arrived here, I saw all these comics going around and they all knew each other, like it used to be with us when we came over first. And I just thought, for one second, how sorry I felt for the likes of Bernard Manning where, y know, you re going along and doing your comedy, and suddenly you re so out of fucking touch with what comedy is. You re talking about stuff and people are going Jesus, that s so fucking old school! . I have to say that I m indifferent to the new Irish guys. I mean, I wish them all the best, but there s very few of them that I d have any interest in going to see. I really don t like stand-up that much.
I beg your pardon?
Well, they re just all talking about the same old shit, you know. That just annoys me. Rich Hall is good, Owen O Neill is doing a great new one-man show; that s what I m interested in, people who are doing different stuff. I ve no interest in going to listen to some bloke asking me if I ve ever noticed this that or the other. That observational stuff is just so boring.
The thing I like about my show now is that all the laughter is real. There s not many jokes in it that are there for the sake of being there. I like the idea of being able to talk about stuff and not having to put a humorous swing on it but still getting the laughs.
Failure of relationships have always been a staple of Sean s schtick, which gives one reason to wonder if, at 31 years of age, he thinks the chance of ever finding a nice girl and settling down to a life of domestic bliss has bypassed him.
Well, I wouldn t go getting fitted out for a tux just yet, he advises. Naw, I must admit, I can t see myself ever getting married. But that s a bit of a ridiculous thing to say because I could fall in love. In fact I m hoping to fall in love here in Edinburgh, it s the only reason I leave the house these days.
There are those, of course, who would consider the marriage of this most eligible of bachelors should it ever occur to be the biggest sell-out in entertainment history, in light of what he has written and said about the subject in his time.
So my personal happiness comes after my integrity now, does it? he asks in some bemusement.
Well, there are the fans to think of . . .
Yeah, well I m trying to lose them at the moment, he mutters unconvincingly. (Despite what Sean says, it s abundantly clear that he s still very fond of his devoted teenage fanclub.) What if I marry a fan, he suggests, would we have your blessing then? Would you approve?
Are we to understand, therefore, that Hughes is currently single?
No, I m actually seeing someone at the moment, he admits.
Who?
It s not anyone that you d know.
Ah, go on.
Naw, you wouldn t know her. Actually, it s more friendship than anything else. I kind of tend to get bored with the sex. I don t know how people do that, y know, have sex with the same person . . . twice.
Sean Hughes has always been a man with a plan. He reckons he ll be touring Alibis For Life for the rest of my fucking life, it seems: all the rest of this year, then Australia and possibly America. I m starting to do more films, and I ve another novel in the pipeline.
Another novel?
It s going to be about the death of culture. It s also about this father who kills himself, and rather than accept that it s a suicide, one of his two sons gets really upset and thinks that culture has killed him. It s talking about suicide in general. I mean, what is suicide? It s where someone doesn t fit in so much that they kill themselves. But taking another spin on that, it s like life has killed them. The boy retraces his dad s life to try and discover what it is that s killed him. It ll be a big book, because I m talking about how society has killed someone. I have to put a story to it as well, without it being a very longwinded boring essay.
When can we expect to peruse this work-in-progress?
I m just working on it in my head at the moment, that s all, avers Sean. I just know as well that the son finds that his dad hasn t left a suicide note, but just left one word written on his desk, Serendipity . That s when good things happen more by luck than by judgement, so I like the idea that the son finds this, which is completely at odds with what his dad s just done. It intrigues him more and he goes about finding out about his father s life.
And to think there was a time when young Hughes was happy to appear on stage wearing a woolly hat and tell jokes about his mum phoning him to say that she d found his missing bed. Where was it? On top of his porno mag collection, of course.
The Detainees is published by Simon & Schuster at #12.99.