THE last time I remember seeing Sean Hughes, he was playing a rather forgettable character on Coronation Street. Last night, at Bristol’s intimate Tobacco Factory Theatre, he was back to almost - but not quite - his Perrier Award-winning best.

That’s not to say he hasn’t been around - ‘Anyone got Dave?’ - but the main thing that’s happened to Sean recently is the death of his father. And that’s actually a big deal.

Having lost my own mother to cancer last year, I went to the Tobacco Factory expecting an emotional mauling. Instead, I found the whole experience incredibly cathartic, as Hughes’ philosophical meanderings about his own experience delved in and out of my own psyche.

Of course, it helps when the night starts on a high note. Arriving on stage in a jockey’s outfit, Sean immediately engages the audience, setting the scene as a place in his mind, somewhere between his childhood living room and his dad’s death bed. His father’s spirit is omnipresent, but this doesn’t mean that it’s an evening of doom and gloom. Far from it.

The narrative slips seamlessly between straight stand-up and reminiscence of his father, but just when you think Hughes is in danger of become sentimental, he pulls you back from the brink with a well-timed quip or a quick ‘cha cha cha!’. The morose subject matter is dealt with in a surprisingly chirpy way; and he ad libs brilliantly, engaging the audience from start to finish.

He uses the juxtaposition of childhood memories of his often drunken father with those of his dad in later years, when he is muttering morphine-induced gibberish, to great effect - and when it all seems to be getting quite frankly a bit heavy, he’ll throw in a joke about prostate checks or ‘kettle in the garden’ moments. Hughes is clever, refusing to be drawn into an emotional quagmire, and if we ever get even close to becoming overwhelmed by the sense of our own mortality he will just pop on some Snow Patrol and change to an easier subject. Like Master Chef.

Oddly, Hughes makes hand puppets an integral part of his performance; a talking mouse, elephant and racehorse all act as third parties in this one-man show, at the same time as a dead man’s spirit is ever-present on the hospital bed.

Hughes doesn’t manipulate the path to his father’s passing as just another way to get a laugh. Death comes to us all, and the death of a loved one brings grief. Perhaps this is Hughes’ way of bringing closure; as he points out at the end, the best way to deal with death, as it is with life, is with dignity. ENDS 455 JCB