He then joined the Bush Theatre as Artistic Director and helped develop it as a venue for new writing and directed new plays by Snoo Wilson, Kurt Vonnegut, Howard Barker, Ron Hutchinson and Ken Campbell.
Hughes was educated at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield and Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
At Cambridge, he was a member of Footlights where he appeared in the revue “Supernatural Gas” (directed by Clive James) as Tsar Nicolas II and a seven foot high HP Sauce bottle.
In 1980, his first play Commitments (which preceded the unrelated Roddy Doyle novel and subsequent film of the same name) won him the London Theatre Critics Most Promising Playwright Award.
He was joint winner of the Writer's Guild Award for Best Drama Series for Between The Lines and created The Brief for ITV as well as adapting Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent for BBC1.