What's the appropriate way to grieve in public? One of Sean Hughes’s former friends missed the memo

One of the glorious things about being a comic is that no matter what stage your career is at, how good you are, how hit-and-miss you are, how nice you are or how much of a tool you are, when you meet another stand-up comedian, there is a fundamental part of one another that you understand.

You know instantly that you are the same species of animal. Even if you can’t stand each other, if you were stuffed and put in the Natural History Museum, you’d be displayed in the same cabinet under “selfcentredosaurus”, next to the cabinet of taxidermied serial killers.

So this week has been a terribly sad one for the comedy world. I got a text on Monday afternoon from a friend saying “Sad news about Sean Hughes”. This text, which I looked at while I was cleaning our guinea pig hutch, was the first I’d heard of Sean’s death. I sat in shock amid the sawdust. Not just at Sean’s stupidly early death, but at just how much of a dickhead my friend was. Texting is for making arrangements, cancelling things you’re too cowardly to cancel up front, and having pointless rows. Not telling you that a comic you still got starstruck around, and who had a couple of times delighted you by inviting you for a drink or a coffee, had died.

It was jarring, then, to read in The Guardian this week an article by Michael Hann about Sean, who had once been his friend. In an attempt to be honest, he came across as a bit spiteful, or out to settle a score. Apparently Sean had stopped speaking to him. Possibly because he’d clocked Hann was the sort of friend who would slate you in the press a couple of days after your death.

There are few jobs which are as sociable as a stand-up comedian’s. Our work is during other people’s playtime, so when we step off the stage and the adrenaline is still pumping, there is always booze and exuberant company to immerse ourselves in.

Having just downloaded our entire internal monologue to make you laugh, it’s easy to think that’s who we actually are. But it’s just the most exaggerated version of a part of us. If you get close to us, you’ll learn that we can all be needy and infuriating sometimes.

What person who dedicates their life to standing on a stage and making strangers laugh doesn’t have a darkness to deal with? It’s hardly a surplus of self-esteem which gives us this compulsion. Carrying on even when you experienced the wretchedness of dying on your arse over and over again is something only a fellow stand-up can understand. Facebook was awash with sweet memories of Sean and messages of condolences to the comedians who were close friends with him.

We all clean out our friends’ cupboards sometimes. I myself have occasionally been bagged up by friends and taken down to the charity shop.

It can be hurtful and baffling to be dumped by someone you weren’t even sleeping with. At least if you’ve been bonking, it’s socially acceptable to cry and wail and send them needy messages when you’re drunk.

It’s hard to talk about for fear of sounding like a five-year-old whining through snot and tears: “She won’t play with me anymore!”

Sometimes you have been close to a person for years, been with them through heartache, joy and a thousand hangovers, but something has soured, there is distance between you and you can’t carry on. They stop texting you. Your calls go unanswered and – the ultimate in passive aggressiveness – they unfollow you on Twitter.

Unlike someone you have had a sexual relationship with, you can’t break up and “just be friends”.

You can’t go from being involved in one another’s every thought process, being in touch with the minutiae of each other’s life, back to being casual acquaintances who occasionally meet for a friendly chinwag.

I appreciate honesty while I am still alive. A while ago, a friend called me to say that she did not want to stay in touch anymore because I hadn’t replied to a text she had sent me telling me she was depressed.

I remembered the text and I remembered not returning it. I had been in “kid chaos” when I received it and then let too much time go by before any reply would mean anything. Pure awkwardness meant I left it and so lost a 20-year friendship. Perhaps she will read this and forgive her flawed friend who misses her terribly.

Admitting your feelings have been hurt by a friend isn’t childish or weak – it’s human. And it stops you from bottling up your disappointment at losing someone who was such a laugh.

Hann’s article said far more about him than about Sean Hughes. It takes serious disappointment to go on the attack right when your ridiculously witty former friend can no longer answer hecklers.