Moshing Impossible: Steve Hughes speaks up

With a CV that boasts membership of several thrash metal bands and a stint as an MTV host, Australian Steve Hughes is not your average comedian. Manchester-based since 2002, his unique brand of satirical humour has made him a favourite with audiences and a regular on television screens. He’s appeared on Live At The Apollo, Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, Stand Up For The Week and One Night Stand.

Last year he enthralled a packed Sugar Club with lauded show Big Issues. Next month he brings his barbed social commentary to Whelan’s, Dublin in the form of new production, While It’s Still Legal.
“I actually stole the title from a review I got off a guy from Chortle many years ago,” he states. “Errr, are reviews under copyright? Even if he’s writing about me? I don’t know. He just said ‘it’s a great satirical comedy, see it while it’s still legal’. So I thought, ‘That’s quite a good title really’! It’s about how political correctness has gone a bit... well, they’re bringing in laws concerning all areas of human behaviour now aren’t they?”
The comedian is in the middle of a grueling 50-date UK tour and is remarkably upbeat for one undertaking such a slog.
“We just did a pretty hectic three weeks. We’re all over the place... Scotland and England to the bottom of Wales. It didn’t look that big on paper!” he giggles.
His colourful CV does raise the question of how does one go from heavy metal drummer to funnyman?
“Well, they’re both about timing,” he states matter-of-factly. “People think it’s weird going from drumming in bands to doing comedy. I don’t think it’s strange at all. I don’t find moving from one area of the arts to another to be weird. If you can do them both, I don’t see a problem!
He was back in the southern hemisphere for a slew of sold-out shows earlier in the year. Does he get the prodigal son welcome?
“When you grow up in a former colony, the only way you can return as the prodigal son is if the people, the colonialists, say you’re alright!” he explains. “Australia has no internalised self-identity. You have to go overseas to England and then the English put you on TV and go, ‘This guy’s funny’. Then the Australians go, ‘Oh, ok’.
“Even though they have brilliant artists and performers, they don’t take them seriously,” he continues. “There’s no confidence in the culture, so they constantly use outside sources, like if you had The Voice or one of those X Factor shows, two out of the four judges would be from overseas. To give it some kind of international kudos.”
Hughes had a television career too, hosting a heavy metal show on MTV in Australia.
“It was a sort of Headbangers’ Ball (legendary MTV metal programme). They were trying to ‘break’ heavy metal in Australia in the early ’90s. Heavy metal was always underground at home, even in the ’80s when the likes of AC/DC and Iron Maiden were huge. It was really Nirvana and grunge that opened Australia up to metal.”
And what was Hughes’ small screen highlight?
“I got to interview Slayer!” he gushes. “The funny thing was, because I’d been involved in the extreme metal scene for so long I’d read about these guys as teenagers with their demos in magazines, I had essentially grown up with them. So when I met the band it was like, ‘Well, I already sort of know you! I’ve been in your life since you were a kid!”
His own adventures in the genre include thrash metal band Slaughter Lord, Mortal Sin and Nazxul. His membership of the global metal community came in quite handy when he arrived on Irish shores in 1999 in need of a place to crash.
“When I first arrived here I ended up staying with the guys from Primordial,” he reveals. “Through a friend I got to meet them and they already knew who I was because of the bands I was in. They were like, ‘Oh yeah, we know who you are. Do you want to stay on our couch?”’
Hughes stayed here for a year honing his craft before moving to the UK, a time he remembers fondly.
“The first show I did outside of Australia was in the International Bar, it was great! I did a few gigs and made friends with some comedians; Dara O Briain, Ian Coppinger, David O’Doherty, Eddie Bannon. I know lots of them. I really liked the scene. I remember thinking, ‘If I can make the Irish laugh I may be truly funny!’”

Steve Hughes performs While It’s Still Legal in Whelan’s, Dublin on December 5