Sean Hughes

It has been four years now since sardonic Irish comedian Sean Hughes left TV pop quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks, and it has been eight years since he toured his last stand up show. In fact, if you were to catch Hughes performing live during the last ten years it would most likely have been at a poetry or book reading, or appearing alongside Jude Law's missus in the West End show As You Like It. But now, aged 41 and with a slightly more politicised take on life, the comic who sold out countless theatres during the 90s and was the youngest ever winner of the Perrier Award returns to the stage to be re-united with his 'first love'. Why has he returned? What has possessed him to go back to a medium he had previously claimed to have taken as far as he possibly could? Simple. He was asked if he'd like to appear on Celebrity Strictly Come Dancing, the dignity-stripping TV graveyard where publicity hungry ex-celebrities go to try to shamelessly force their way back into the nation's consciousness. "It was confirmation that nobody has any idea what I stand for" he recently said in an interview with Time Out. What Sean Hughes does stand for is honest, thoughtful comedy. And thankfully throwaway tea time television's loss is stand-up comedy's gain. For the first time in eight years, Hughes is hitting the road with a brand new show, a slightly fuller face and a renewed vigour for his art.