After helping establish the Talisman Theatre in 1942, he trained as an actor, making his professional debut in 1949, in a production of Noël Coward's Fallen Angels.
Other notable roles include an English tourist in Love Is a Splendid Illusion (1970) and a harried golfer in the Last of the Summer Wine episode "Foggie's niblick."
He appeared in An Englishman's Castle in 1978, a serial of alternative history in which the Nazis have won the Second World War.
[2] Hughes also featured as a maitre d' in The Great Muppet Caper (1981); the P&O manager in David Lean's A Passage to India (1984) and a policeman in the John Boorman film Hope and Glory (1987).
TV miniseries included Jack the Ripper (1988) starring Michael Caine in which Hughes played Mr. Poulson, the proprietor of a news agency.