STAND-UP GUY
WHAT DO YOU call a comedian who tells you he doesn’t drink, runs 5k in 20 minutes, is a vegan and practises meditation? A liar? No. A comedian? Because if it’s not a lie it’s got to be a joke, right? Wrong again. The answer is Dave Hughes.
I’m listening to Hughes tell stories about how he became the man he is today as he sits in his home study. As he talks, the 50-year-old funny man is contemplating a severed head of himself that’s staring back at him from his desk. “I did it for Halloween, and it’s looking at me, and well, it’s me decapitated,” says Hughes, his famously laconic, deadpan drawl instantly bringing a smile to my face. “It’s probably not good feng shui. I probably should move it somewhere else.”
As macabre as it is having your own head encroach upon your workspace, the 3D cranium is perhaps a useful reminder to Hughes that life is short and, at its core, ridiculous. It’s something Hughes realised a long time ago. The problem? Like most of us, his ego sometimes sees him forget it.
“I remember having the attitude that life was funny from an early age,” says Hughes. “I was able to see the silliness, luckily. But still, to this day, I’m too egocentric in many ways,
