Mark Steel
I knew Sean from before he won the Perrier award in 1990. He was a Crystal Palace fan and we used to go to the football together. I remember going to a match with him in the early 90s, when he was on the telly quite a lot, and I took him down the pub with me. He was really warm with people and we ended up staying the evening. There was a genuine charm to him that was way beyond showbiz. He liked that world: being sat in the corner of a pub with a load of people who’d been at the football. Being funny with them but not in a show-off way.
I never quite worked out why he supported Palace. He grew up in Ireland. He decided to support them as a kid – and that would be right for Sean. He wouldn’t support Manchester United or Liverpool, like a lot of Irish people do. He’d see that as something grubby. Of course he’d support a team like Palace.
He liked the Tindersticks and bands like that, really quite obscure music. He didn’t have a great deal of time for anything he saw as the mainstream.
This afternoon I watched an episode of Sean’s Show. Sometimes you look back at something after 25 years and it’s not as good as you remember it. But Sean’s Show is better than I’d remembered. It was really fun. And so innovative – a new way of doing that Spike Milligan thing: we’re doing a show but we’re not doing a show, you know? Most comedy TV shows in the early 90s had people in front of an audience doing standup, or they were sitcoms like Birds of a Feather. To combine the two was thoughtful. And it really connected with young people.
A lot of really good comics get a bit of success and start to question it: “Why do people like me? Should I be doing something more challenging?” It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a bit of that going on with Sean. His books could be really quite dark but I never saw him being particularly like that. I always found him really charming. And he was a proper comic – no one can dispute that. He had a joke which went along the lines: “God is amazing because he’s fucked up my life – and he doesn’t exist both at the same time, which is quite a skill.” That’s brilliant, isn’t it?
Rhona Cameron
Sean used to say I was the lesbian version of him. We just saw eye to eye on so many things: we both had TV shows, we both had a bit of Celtic in us, we both loved Morrissey, football, women and drinking. I remember hanging out with him a lot in the 90s, and talking about how hard life was, how impossible we found other people and how much we struggled against our own propensity to be miserable. I’d stay over at his house – we were pals.
We probably met in the King’s Head pub in Crouch End at some point in the early 90s, although I can’t remember for sure because those early days were a complete blur. Everybody drank, everybody smoked, everybody took drugs. Comedy back then was proper full-on. It was old school rock’n’roll, lots of lunatics finding their way to a stage. It certainly wasn’t like the bland version of it now, with huge Apollo-type venues and panel shows.
Sean was one of the people who encouraged me from the start. He saw something in me and we hit it off. I was a fledgling comic, and I really looked up to him. He wasn’t a gag merchant. There’s nothing wrong with making your living like that, but it wasn’t Sean’s thing. He was more anecdotal. He had charm and charisma so his jokes didn’t need to be so polished – he was in that special group of people who could just own the stage. That’s not to say he didn’t have material. I could be quite lazy but Sean was a workhorse. And he was so passionate about comedy – he was always going to see other people’s shows. We went to see Stewart Lee recently.
Sean had a poetic nature and an Irish soulfulness. He had an inner beauty and gorgeous Irish eyes. He was vulnerable, too. He had a puny body and wore a cardigan, and he was really fond of animals – he’d travel to Indonesia to hang out with elephants and at one point he had about five dogs and cats, including Bill who was named after his friend Bill Hicks. He knew his classics but he loved his football.
After the 90s, I didn’t see Sean for a while, but over the last decade we started to reconnect. Most of our time together was spent away from comedy. We’d go for a few pints, or walk the dog, and we’d talk about love, loss, regret, therapy, addiction and standup. He was always trying to convince me to go back to regular touring.
We won Celebrity Pointless together last year, and it was really lovely to be teamed up with him. But I did see him shaking and sweating a lot on the show, and there was always a constant smell of alcohol around him.
I think having talent – and I’m talking about real talent, the magic stuff that Sean had – can amplify the complex relationship with one’s demons. The highly pressurised society that we live in today is not designed for sensitive souls – and that’s exactly what Sean was.
Seven of his funniest gags
Everyone grows out of their Morrissey phase … except Morrissey.
These born again Christians, they come to your door and go: “Would you like to invite Jesus into your house?” You go: “Yeah, but you can wait outside.”
I don’t know whether it’s because I’m a man or because I was brought up a Catholic. But sometimes I find the whole idea of sex repulsive and at other times I’d gladly stick my penis up a drain.
I thought when I was 41, I would be married with kids. Well, to be honest I thought I would be married with weekend access.
What the fuck do gardeners do when they retire?
I failed my driving test for stalling. The instructor said: “Just get into the fucking car.”
I was a rebel. I used to rebel against my parents. What I used to do is, when they went to the shops, I’d run upstairs and turn the immersion heater on for an hour.