Born in London in 1965, he spent most of his childhood in Firhouse, Dublin. When he later moved to London, he started working in the Comedy Store in 1987, a job which marked the beginning of his comedy career.

Hughes rapidly rose to fame in the early 1990s, becoming one of the first of a new wave of Irish comedians to do well in Britain. His stand-up routines, filled with tales of his single-life struggles, typified a generation of rudderless twentysomethings in the 1990s, a decade which had difficulty defining itself. In 1990, he became the youngest ever winner of the Perrier Comedy Award at the age of just 24.

This win followed the success of 'A One Night Stand With Sean Hughes', featuring a set that was a replica of his living room.

In 1992, he presented Ah Sean for the BBC, a quirky travelogue programme that saw him trek around Dublin (which at the time was the European Capital of Culture), reminiscing about his childhood in the city.

Around the same period, he started the successful cult series Sean's Show for Channel 4, a surreal sitcom in front of a studio audience. His London flat, local pub and corner shop were recreated as the set, with the fourth wall of his sitting room broken down so the audience could see in.

The effect of Hughes wandering around the set, dancing to The Smiths and monitoring answering machine messages from spurned dates, was backed up by surreal and bizarre repeated jokes, including messages from Samuel Beckett and God on his answering machine and conversations with a spider who was actually Elvis Presley.

Hughes also created catchphrases such as "buh bye, buh bye", which he muttered every time he ended a phone call, and "that sock's still not dry", a reference to an ever-present football sock hanging on the back of a chair.

Three years later, Channel 4 featured Sean Hughes is Thirty Somehow, the recording of a standup set, and it was shortly after this that he immersed himself further in TV, joining Never Mind The Buzzcocks.

It was through this gig that he became better known to the wider public.

Hughes was a team captain on the acerbic music panel quiz hosted by Mark Lamarr.

He endeared himself to audiences with his musical knowledge and dry surreal wit, a trait he shared with his friend, the legendary comedian Bill Hicks (he appeared on Totally Bill Hicks in 1994).

He stayed on the quiz for six years as team captain before quitting and handing over his position to Bill Bailey. "I don't miss it, " he says of Buzzcocks. "I don't watch the show anymore. I left because it became pretty much the same show every week . . . and that got boring."

Hughes was always uncomfortable with the concept of being famous for being on TV and, indeed, with 'celebrity' in general. "I'm aware that before I did television, people weren't going, 'Wow, I'd love to shag him, ' but it's the power of that box. I know I'm not ugly, but I'm nothing special and television tends to make people look a bit special, " he once said.

Hughes stopped performing stand-up in 1999 because his "engine was empty", despite the fact that he has let it be known he has generally always found standup "easy". Instead, he concentrated on writing and acting.

He has published four books: two novels, The Detainees and It's What He Would Have Wanted, and two collections of stories, Sean's Book and Alibis For Life. After appearing in a brace of Irish films (as Dave Machin from Eejit Records in The Commitments and as a psychiatrist in The Butcher Boy), he signed up for the role of a poet in the Jonathan Rhys Meyersfronted BBC series Gormenghast in 2000. This role was followed by two animations . . . a tapir in Robbie The Reindeer in Legend of the Lost Tribe and the more permanent voice of Finbar, a shark in the BBC's children's cartoon Rubberdubbers.

In 2002, he took a job as a presenter on BBC 6 Music, fronting the station's Sunday morning programme. This radio gig followed a stint at GLR radio, where a Morrissey quip (that everyone grows out of their Morrissey phase, except Morrissey) came back to haunt him when he interviewed the man himself.

He was said to be trembling with fear when Morrissey brought it up but all the Smiths man said was, "Too true, too true." During the interview, the pair also discussed their dedication to vegetarianism. Hughes says he refuses to eat meat "for political reasons".

After Buzzcocks, he somewhat disappeared from the public eye. In February 2004, he performed at the Guildhall Theatre in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. Just 24 people turned up to the gig. Hughes ran through his set and cut it short to invite the audience to the pub for a drink. Twelve of the audience members joined him at the Hide Bar and Kitchen, with three going on with Hughes to an Indian restaurant for dinner.

He refused to take part in Strictly Come Dancing saying he would never appear on any TV programmes apart from Buzzcocks. He maintains he is uncomfortable in smart dress, especially suits, and is generally dishevelled enough that Jo Brand once had to instruct him to cut his nostril hair. He took her advice.

Despite having a seismic effect on British and Irish comedy, his return this year to stand-up after appearing in the TV series The Last Detective has been poorly received. He describes his new material as the point of view of a fortysomething who still feels like a boy, but critics have accused him of being rambling and unstructured.

He recently misjudged the public mood at the Hay Literary Festival by making a joke about abducted girl Madeline McCann's parents ("Did you see they went to see the Pope last week? I don't think he's involved. I mean, I know he's a Nazi, but, well. . .") followed by a gag about children with Down's Syndrome playing football.

Hughes attests that being older means he's not afraid of making controversial comments but the critics are still looking for humour amidst his controversy. Luckily, he now has a soap to fall back on.

CV
Name: Sean Hughes
Born: 10 November 1965 in London; grew up in Firhouse, Dublin
In the news: He joined the cast of Coronation Street this weekend