He’s the comedian and actor we all know and love. Richard Ayoade often graces our TV screens on panel shows, but last night the audience at the Octagon saw him in a different capacity: no less comic, but a lot more authentic, as he talked at length with writer and broadcaster Nick Ahad about his new book, The Unfinished Harauld Hughes. Before introducing Ayoade, Ahad described the book as ‘so singular that I’m not entirely sure how to categorise it.’
Who is Harauld Hughes? Those of you asking yourselves this question are filling the very same shoes that Ayoade himself walked in. These metaphorical shoes were donned in a special moment that sparked an investigative journey, whose culmination is Ayoade’s new book, published just a few days ago. This moment was Ayoade’s stumbling upon a copy of The Two-Hander Trilogy by Harauld Hughes in a second hand bookshop. He was instantly struck by his uncanny resemblance to the author’s picture.
Intrigued by this unlikely mirror, Ayoade read the play and found himself equally mesmerised by how Hughes’ writing style – brusque and pithy – also reflected his own style of comedy. And so Ayoade was compelled to dive into the life and works of his mysterious writing doppelgänger.
The only disclaimer that I need to add here – and it’s a big one – is that Harauld Hughes doesn’t exist. He never did. Harauld Hughes is a figment of Ayoade’s imagination, kind of a literary Hyde to Ayoade’s comic Jekyll. In writing a book on discovering the fictional Hughes’ works, Ayoade himself has undertaken the monumental task of also writing Harauld Hughes’ entire oeuvre. This collection of plays, screenplays and poems are now available for purchase, too. Ayoade actually read us one of Hughes’ (Ayoade’s) spoof poems midway through the talk, prefaced with the claim: ‘I can do his voice!’
Ayoade’s book The Unfinished Harauld Hughes is a record of this fake research journey, discussing his reflections on attempting to rescue a great but forgotten writer from the depths of literary oblivion. Ayoade himself described the book as a ‘mockumentary.’ The major publisher Faber & Faber is even in on the joke, creating an entire author profile for Harauld Hughes.
In the talk, Ayoade discussed a little about how he feels like he’s playing a character in interviews and stand up, and this meant that the leap to impersonating a forgotten (read: nonexistent) mid-century playwright wasn’t too difficult for him. This is perhaps one of the most meta books I’ve come into contact with so far in my literary career, and I challenge anyone reading this article right now to find a work more crazily intricate than The Unfinished Harauld Hughes.
Throughout the evening, Ayoade touched on his creative inspirations, naming the likes of Joan Didion, Edward Albee and Harold Pinter. Ayoade also credited the cult classic film Spinal Tap for his love of the mockumentary genre, and on structuring a good comic novel or film, he said: ‘When a comedy is good, it’s just drama suppressed – with jokes.’ He then went on to speak of how those great literary mysteries, like Salinger’s disappearance from the literary world, became motivation to create one himself.
This talk was both one of the strangest and funniest that Off The Shelf has hosted in recent years. I can’t wait to open my copy of The Unfinished Harauld Hughes and embark on this hilariously circuitous journey alongside Ayoade.
Rating: ★★★★☆
The Unfinished Harauld Hughes was published in October 2024. Other Off the Shelf Festival events can be found here
