Sean's Interview

"There's more to life than books you know, but not much more" - Morrissey, 'You Handsome Devil'.

Sean Hughes begins his first book with a Smiths quote. That's pretty much as you'd expect. From there on, Sean's Book is far less predictable. In fact, calling his collection of poetry, short stories, prose and journalism Sean's Book might be misleading; it evokes an image of Sean, tucked up in his house (the sign outside reads 'Chez Sean') pulling Sean's Chair up to Sean's Desk, to tap a few one-liners and surreal sketches into Sean's Wordprocessor.

Sean's Book has its very, very funny moments ("Years ago I was asked by a Londoner, 'What's it like when a bomb goes off?' All I could do was describe to the best of my knowledge scenes from All Quiet On The Western Front" - 'Being Irish in London) but it's a multi-emotioned little beast. The poetry in particular is effective and moving, partly because I am a self-confessed soppy git, but also because Sean Hughes articulates self-loathing, fear, hope, lust, love and regret with honesty, without resorting to the layers of deliberately ambiguous imagery and twaddle that have contrived to convince a generation that poetry is, by definition, crap.

"It's not pretentious," says Sean. "I don't like pretence myself and the one thing I don't like about the whole poetry business is that they shut out a lot of people because you tend to feel you're stupid if you don't understand a poem.

"I wouldn't even call them poems in a sense. I try to keep it as straightforward as possible and you'll never find me writing about nature. I can't relate to that because I've always been brought up with big buildings around me - it would be very pointless me describing someone as a rosebud or something."

The book is divided into nine sections that deal with comedy, love, death, travel, living alone, sex (the shortest section, interestingly), real life, and moments.

"I wanted to put the poetry into its proper context, you know, that's why the sections are very carefully laid out. Hopefully people will read it through and then drop into it at their will. It has been written to be read in that order but inevitably people don't do that, they just flick at it really.

"For the last couple of years greedy book publishers have been trying to make me bring out a coffee table book and I've no interest in ripping people off. This way I bring out a book which will sell a lot less but people should get more out of, I hope."

There are no photographs of Sean doing his startled bunny impression. The screaming fans are going to be disappointed.

The introduction to Sean's Book states 'The characters portrayed in this book are unfortunately just a bit too real". His ex-girlfriends must be getting a bit uncomfortable...

"Well, I don't mention anyone's names. Also nobody, besides myself really, comes off badly. The poems are quite personal, then the short stories are an attempt to try and look in other people's heads a lot of the time. It's always from a tender point of view that I write, and people were inspirations behind various things. I never sat down in my life and said, 'I'm going to write a poem now', it's when something's destroying me so much inside that I have to get it out, and I want to articulate it as much as possible because I know these are universal feelings. To me poetry was destroyed a lot in school by teachers telling me what poems meant. I just wanted people to read the poems and get what they can out of them and relate it to their own lives rather than think 'oh, look what happened to Sean'.

The portrayal of his parents, as in his stand-up and television work, is candid. Have they read the book?

"I try to discourage them because it's not actually for them. When I did the 'One Night Stand show', which was a direct plea to them to listen, they didn't pick up on that and I just went, look I'm never trying to explain my work to them again. My younger brother is my closest ally in the whole world, he's probably my biggest critic as well. Before the book came out he was telling me what he thought of things - he can relate to it because he's very similar to me."

Sean Hughes is known as a stand-up comedian, so people who go to see him, expect to laugh. At his performance in the National Stadium earlier this year, it was clear that some people were going to find humour in the poems that crop up during the show, even if it killed them.

"The backbone of my argument for a long time is that comedians are supposed to be very one-dimensional and always just good for a laugh, and that's never been what I've been about. Obviously I'm known as a comedian but I just want to say that there's a bit more than this. I try not to do too much poetry on stage because it belittles me when they're not really reaching out for that, but I'll still do the odd one. I don't read the poetry just for the sake of it. I think they're part of what I'm trying to talk about on that night, you know. I remember at the Stadium I read the poem 'I Want', about a girl getting diabetes, and that's very much about Dublin, and about people from the cul-de-sac going for their ambitions. So I generally will read things that I think are part of the show rather than just to change the mood. Nobody will thank me for it though!"

The book jacket describes Sean's Book as 'charting one man's monumental inner struggle'. Is this just another way of saying that he is, in fact, a miserable sod?

"I think I have my moments like everyone else. With prose and poetry, you're taking very extreme feelings, otherwise they wouldn't be written. I have the cynic's hope for the world, because I do honestly believe that cynics are the ones who actually hold out something, because they care enough to be cynical about things.

"I've a funny feeling I'm going to be forever twelve in my soul though - you know that innocence you always wish you have. I think another thing about being brought up in Ireland in a very Catholic background, is once I left I craved for a purity that we were brought up with which never really existed. That's where Catholic guilt comes in, because you get guilty when you're not pure, but then you realise that nothing is ever pure really. I try to write around that theme as well. That's one of the things that makes me unhappy, because there's one side of me that wants to be as pure as possible, but that tends to mean that you can't mingle with people, because once you leave the house things start going wrong.

"I wouldn't describe myself as happy or unhappy, I just have my moments, which in a sense is what the book's about."

Sean Hughes will be touring Britain and Ireland later in the year, bringing The Divine Comedy (alias Neil Hannon) along as support. "The Divine Comedy's album is really beautiful and I'm hoping Neil might put some music to some of the poems as well. It could make it really tremendous if you just got the right measure of it all." Sean's Book even includes a useful array of choice lyrics that aspiring musicians are invited to pilfer from, none, sadly, taken from his own back-catalogue of attempted lyrics, which have all been thrown out.

"When I was about sixteen and everyone started going out with people, I couldn't because I thought it was a real farce and I felt so stupid. So I used to sit at home and write lyrics. I was trying to be clever really, the way you try when you're younger. There's always hope for putting the poems to music now though because I write to a certain rhythm, though you're always going to get some real stupid people pointing out that none of the poems rhyme."

The reviews of Sean's Book have so far been very positive, even, unexpectedly, those from critics traditionally deemed high-brow. "They tend to talk about me being brave, though, which I don't really see. You can see how easy it would be to have a go at the book, but I think it's a bit pointless. If you don't like me you don't like me."

There is only one thing a published, serious author and poet has to dread apart from bad reviews...

"People write to me and they send me poems," says Sean hesitantly. "It's really sweet. Really. But..." and his voice trails away for a moment.

"Cathal Coughlan said it, in 'Bertie's Brochures'. Everyone's a poet."

• A new seven-part series of Sean's Show begins on Wednesday 17th November on Channel 4, in which Sean leaves his bedsit and moves in with a woman. "Needless to say, it won't work out . . ."