HI SEAN, are you looking forward to coming back to Belfast in a couple of weeks?
Yes, I love Sean Doran's Out To Lunch Festival – he always puts on a great bill.
The new show is about how the two sides of your brain, common sense and 'mumbo jumbo', are in constant conflict. How has it been going down?
It's a really weird one: the first half has lots of jokes, whereas the second half is almost all story-based. People seem to much prefer the second half, which is odd – usually all they want is jokes.
There's one story in particular, which is about one of the best things I've ever done in my life which was trekking mountain gorillas in Rwanda.
When I started off, I was just kind of telling a story about going on holiday, but now I've put in kind of a point to it: gorillas travel a kilometre a day and then stop to uproot stuff and eat it, because they're vegetarians, and they also love just hanging out with their family.
We humans have overcomplicated everything: I was looking at the simple life of those gorillas and it made me wonder how we managed to f*** everything up so much.
Mumbo Jumbo is very much getting back to stand-up. It's the first time I've used a stick mic in ages – there was so much going on in the last two shows that I had to have a clip-on mic on my shirt.
Your recent show Life Becomes Noises dealt with the death of your father. Was it a big challenge to take such intensely personal subject matter on the road?
Yeah, you can imagine what a hard sell it was doing press for it – 'Oh, that'll be fun, then' – but it got phenomenal reviews that said 'it will make you laugh and cry'.
That's what I'd always wanted from a show, so I was very happy.
"I had two remits for it: one was not to make it sentimental and secondly to keep it as 'real' as possible.
The show after that, Penguins, was still kind of a themed set but it was all about growing up in Ireland and how you're not given any sex education, basically.
My older brother used to tell me "you've only got a certain amount of sperm" – and like, you'd believe that!
I believe Mumbo Jumbo will be coming out on DVD shortly, correct?
Yeah, I'm actually filming it tomorrow in Cardiff. I've done two DVDs with the same people before and I really like them, so it should be fine.
There's no pressure, really. The show works every night and I've done it like 50 times. It's nice to do it at the end of the tour too, because you end up with lots of 'add-ons' to all the jokes.
Sean's Show and Sean's Shorts are remembered extremely fondly by people of a certain age. Would you ever consider reviving them?
No, because I am too old to be on telly. I'm telling you, it's a young man's game.
Still, you've been doing quite a bit of acting lately – eagle-eyed viewers may have spotted you as a terminally depressed tramp in the Casualty Christmas special last week. What else have you appeared in recently?
The Casualty thing was kind of ironic given that there's a bit in my show where I talk about going for a blood test and how I don't like hospitals – but there I was filming in a hospital in Cardiff for three weeks.
Of course, I was playing a tramp, not a doctor.
But yeah, I've been really busy with acting recently: I did three months in King's Cross playing Mr Perk in The Railway Children with a [affects gruff Yorkshire accent] Yorkshire accent.
I didn't think I'd be good at it but actually I really liked it. That was quite a nice change, because I'm so used to arriving in places on my own, but there I was sharing a dressing room with nine other guys.
I really chanced my arm. I just met the producers and they asked 'Can you do a Yorkshire accent?', which I'd never ever done before. So of course I immediately said 'Yes, I definitely can'.
Luckily it was a really great experience.
You've also appeared in the likes of Coronation Street, The Last Detective and Miss Marple over the years. Was acting something you always wanted to try?
No, I'm a stand-up comic. You get different types of comedians but my thing has always been very much to go for the truthful aspect.
So that kind of helps when you do some acting work, because you can find the truth in things.
But really, I'm just chancing my arm like all Irish people do.
There's always that first couple of days where you think they're going to go "Er, you're not very good are you? Can you leave before this gets too expensive?"
Sean Hughes, Sunday January 31, The Black Box, Belfast. Tickets via CQAF.com
