If his dad's Holden Kingswood was in the driveway when a young Dave Hughes came home from school, he knew it was going to be a tough night.
The equation was clear in Hughes's mind. That car meant Desmond Hughes hadn't gone to his afternoon shift at the Nestle factory. Which meant he'd been drinking. Which would make him feel guilty. Which would cause him to lash out. Which meant the family was about to cop a night of yelling and fear.
"Knowing there's a loaded gun in the house and someone who is not mentally stable and drunk in the house, it's not a relaxing way to go through your childhood," Hughes tells Australian Story.
Back then, Hughes was a shy kid, known among his three older siblings more for crying easily than making them laugh. They didn't know that at the age of 14, alone in his bed, Hughes vowed to become a comedian one day.
He'd have to battle his own alcohol issues and endure a nagging internal dialogue of self-love and self-loathing, but by his mid-20s, Hughes was on the road to achieving that dream.
Today, the housing commission kid from Warrnambool, Victoria, is one of Australia's most recognisable comedians; a millionaire, a drawcard in the fickle world of comedy … but it's not enough.
"I'm definitely addicted to work, addicted to comedy, always looking for the next audience," says Melbourne-based Hughes, 54, whose latest role has been in the jungle on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here after his radio gig in Sydney was axed last year.
"I've spent a lot of time at the shrine of Dave Hughes, just bowing down … concerned about being a hero or wanting to be known or wanting to be adored by everyone or as many people as possible," he tells Australian Story.
He's trying to rein in the ego, he says, to be less paranoid about image, less concerned about those who don't like him.
But that doesn't mean he'll stop trying to make them laugh.
'I don't want alcohol to control my life'
No-one laughed the first time Hughes took hold of a microphone at a stand-up gig in Perth in 1993. In the words of his friend Rove McManus, who was embarking on a comedy career at the same time, "he fell flat on his face".
Hughes labels it the worst moment of his life. "I'm on stage, microphone in hand, trying to be funny. But most of my brain is going, 'You are a loser. You are useless. You're never going to be a success in life'."
There'd been other bad times. Like when he got so drunk at the start of his second (unsuccessful) tilt at university that he "shat myself". Or the time he spent working in an abattoir, suffering eczema and being bullied by the other workers.
Or the year on the dole after leaving uni for good, his "most depressed year", when he spent most of his days in the bath and most of the nights getting drunk or high on marijuana.
"I was getting depressed about being drunk or about not being a winner in life," he says.
"There were moments back in that time where I was really at a low ebb."
He turned to his mother, Carmel, a constant source of comfort. She'd been raised in an orphanage, became a nurse, married Desmond and, despite her husband's drinking and volatile moods, managed to hold the family together.
Hughes told his mother that he thought he had schizophrenia. She took him to a doctor who said that wasn't his problem — it was his drinking and pot smoking.
It triggered a change in Hughes. He knew too well the way his dad turned from likeable bloke to a dark presence after drinking. Desmond was never physically violent but his moods — and the loaded gun — created an air of terror in the house. "I still remember when he brought it out one day and said, 'I will shoot you all.' That wasn't relaxing," he says.
Hughes decided he didn't want to repeat the cycle. "I had the thought, 'I don't want alcohol to control my life, and as I'd seen it, control family members' lives'. I didn't want to be that. So, that was a big part of the reason why I stopped drinking."
He had one final bender at the age of 21 after the local Australian Rules football team he played for won the grand final, stringing the party out for about eight weeks. Then he quit. It stuck. "I felt like I'd taken the power back."
'Absolutely hooked': Hughes finds a spotlight
His focus returned. When a mate decided to head to Perth, Hughes went with him with a plan to "follow my dream" and leave bad habits behind. And that's how Hughes found himself on stage, trying to make people laugh — and failing dismally.
He reckons that if he'd still been drinking, he'd have slunk away, never to return. But the sober Hughes fronted up the next week, joking about how badly he'd done the week before. The audience laughed.
The next gig a few months later was the clincher. "I walked on stage and just relaxed. I thought, 'I'm a winner for just being up here.' And it just caught fire that night," he says.
"Probably to this day, [it's] the best gig I've ever done. My brain was going, 'You're right, you were right. You are funny. This is a life for you. From that moment, I was absolutely hooked."
McManus says he's never seen anyone find their comedic voice as quickly as Hughes, who used his setbacks and embarrassing moments in life to create a self-deprecating persona that struck a chord with the audience.
"He has a very laid-back, laconic, dry delivery," McManus says. "He was a bit downtrodden … he would be talking about being on the dole, trying to find a girlfriend. He could speak to everyday people, and he was supremely relatable."
After a couple of years honing his skills in Perth, Hughes moved to Melbourne to take on the comedy circuit. He scored his first TV gig on Hey, Hey It's Saturday, performed regularly at St Kilda's legendary Hotel Esplanade and did a stint in London before returning as a sketch writer for Channel 7's Full Frontal.
Finally, he scored a spot at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala in 1999. He'd arrived. "That was the year when I thought, 'Alright, I'm going to make some money here," Hughes says. "I knew then that it was a financially viable thing to do."
So certain was Hughes about his career trajectory, he went out and bought a purple Toyota Corolla.
Hughes can't say no to career opportunities
The Hughes family is playing the card game Cheat, good-naturedly ribbing each other and sharing tales of their day, when Hughes asks his youngest, Tess, how she would feel if he couldn't make it to her graduation due to work.
"Probably disappointed but not surprised," Tess says with a smile.
It has always been this way. Rafferty, his eldest, says Hughes is away so much, he sometimes asks the kids (Sadie is the middle child) to tell his wife of 18 years, Holly Ife, that he's going away. "He's scared of what she's going to say, which is just idiotic," Rafferty says.
Ife admits it was hard to come to terms with Hughes's need for praise and success, something she attributes, in part, to his insecurity as a child. "It took a while for me to understand how much of a problem his ego is for him," she says. "I think it's something famous people battle with, this desire to get attention all the time and to always be the best or the most famous.
"Even in our marriage, the ego is the thing, that's always the biggest problem, because I'll be saying, 'Actually, you should be at home here with us,' but he can't pass up an opportunity to do something that will help his career."
Kate Langbroek, with whom Hughes shared a successful radio career for 18 years, says work is his "enduring mistress" and admires Ife's ability to keep the home fires burning while Hughes answered the burning desire for recognition.
"Holly's the river that flows over the rough-hewn rocks of Hughesy and smooths the edges," Langbroek says.
'Wisdom often comes from failure'
About 18 months ago, Hughes's other great supporter and guide, his mum Carmel, died after a long battle with cancer. It's only since her death that he has started to talk publicly about his dad's drinking. Hughes says he and his dad, who died about 14 years ago, had overcome their differences.
"People do what they do with the best of their abilities," he says. "I didn't hold a grudge against him at all, even though I've gone down a different path in the way I live my life. He was a wise man in many ways who would always say that family is number one and as I was chasing success over the years, maybe I didn't agree with that. But now as I get older, I realise he was right."
Still, that drive has led to a successful career. He's enjoyed a long-running gig on Channel 10's The Project, radio stardom and sell-out stand-up tours. But he's also come to understand that there are lessons to be learned from setbacks, such as when a TV show is not renewed, or a gig doesn't sell out. "Wisdom often comes from failure," he says.
"If I could go back in time, I would have a different mindset and not be as focused on wanting to be the most popular," he says. "I would just stay in the present more and I would not have that internal monologue, which is basically narcissistic, morbid self-love, which I've had since I was probably four. Wanting to be the best and then being miserable because I'm not seen as being the best."
Not that he has any intention of giving up the hard work of making people laugh. He still has a hankering for an international career. His appetite was whetted in Los Angeles in 2023 when he did a few gigs, "and they laughed hard".
"Part of my brain goes, why aren't I living here? This is millions of people who've never heard of me and don't have an opinion about me," he says. "I can hit them with my best comedy."
Just where his career goes now is a work in progress, but Hughes knows that comedy, that beacon of light that guided an anxious 14-year-old as he ruminated in his bedroom, will always be a part of him.
"I just love it," he says. "I love having an audience in front of me, and my job is to make them laugh. And I will love that forever. If I end up in a nursing home, I will be organising gigs in that nursing home because I love it."
Watch Dave Hughes on Australian Story at 8pm (AEDT) on ABCTV and ABC iview.
[Zendesk]
