Billy Would Have Loved This
The Professor
On performing when it matters. And who you’re really doing it for.
I was nervous on Tuesday morning.
Properly nervous.
Not the kind you shake off with a deep breath. The kind that sits in your chest and won’t move. The kind that makes you question everything five minutes before you open your mouth.
I was about to present to the IMPACT Network… Queensland’s cross-sector lived experience workforce… from inside Brisbane Immigration Detention Centre. On a hotspot. Off camera for most of it to protect the internet connection. Almost 2 years into a detention that was never supposed to last this long.
And I kept thinking… who am I to be doing this?
Not false modesty. A genuine question. Because imposter syndrome doesn’t care about your credentials. It doesn’t care what you’ve built or what you’ve survived. It shows up anyway. Right on cue. Five minutes before you need it least.
I took a breath.
And I thought about Billy.
Billy Hughes was my stepdad. A word I’ve never been fully comfortable with, because for thirty-seven years he was simply my dad. He arrived in 1989 and never left… not really, not even now.
He was the King of Dublin cabaret. A man who could walk into any room in any country and own it within minutes. Not through volume or performance tricks. Through presence. Through the kind of warmth that makes people feel genuinely seen.
I’d watch him from the side of the stage as a kid and think… I could never do that.
And to be fair to myself, I was right about part of it.
The singing. Absolutely not. I am fortunate to have some gifts. A voice is not one of them. Billy could fill a room with one note. I could empty one just as fast. We were very different in that department and I made peace with it early.
But that’s not what I meant.
What I couldn’t do… what I genuinely didn’t believe I’d ever be able to do… was that thing he had where the whole room leaned in. That effortless connection. That warmth that made people feel genuinely seen before he’d said anything worth remembering.
That was Billy.
He’d just smile and tell me he saw something in me that I didn’t.
For the last nine months of his life, he read every article I wrote. Every one. We’d talk about them… him and Mam… after they’d listened. Philosophy. Ideas. Life. He’d ask questions about Viktor Frankl. I bought him the book. He’d tell anyone who’d listen that I was something special.
He passed away at Christmas.
And on Tuesday morning, sitting inside a detention centre with a hotspot and a racing heart, I was about to do a presentation that really mattered.
Without him.
The room came alive.
I could feel it even off camera. Even through a screen. Even from in here.
Practitioners. Lived experience workers. People who had never touched the justice system and people who had never fully left one. Strangers, most of them. People with no particular reason to give me their attention except that something was reaching them.
Emily Cooper delivered her part of the session and owned every second of it. The energy she brought, the truth she told, the space she held… the room felt all of it.
And then the Q&A opened.
Strangers started speaking. Rose. Said. Skye. People I’d never met, who had no connection to me beyond this one morning, weighing in with the kind of honesty and warmth that you don’t manufacture. You can’t perform that. It either happens or it doesn’t.
It happened.
At one point Emily said… how am I supposed to follow that?
I won’t pretend that didn’t get to me.
Because Billy used to do that. Stop a room. Make people feel something they weren’t expecting to feel. And then grin like he knew it was coming all along.
The boy he nicknamed “The Professor” to all his mates did it on Tuesday. From a detention centre. On a hotspot.
He would have found that absolutely hilarious. And then told everyone he knew.
And then Marcus.
One of my programme graduates. Detained alongside me. Same walls. Different story. He sat in that web room and something rekindled in him… I watched it happen in real time. A man navigating the same uncertainty I am, feeling hope move through him because of something we built together in here. Right here … in custody.
That is not a case study.
That is a human being remembering that the dark isn’t permanent.
And then my girlfriend appeared.
I wasn’t ready for that. I thought I had my composure. I thought I was fine.
I wasn’t fine.
She brought a tear to my eye mid-meeting… the kind of support that doesn’t waver, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t ask you to be anything other than exactly what you are. In a moment that was already full, she made it fuller. In a room that was already emotional, she found the part of me that was still holding back and quietly undid it.
I sat there inside a detention centre and dropped a couple of emotional tears.
Big Boys Do Cry…
The kind of moment that means something is working.
One of the first things I thought afterwards… quietly, to myself, shortly after I texted my partner… was this:
I bet Billy was smiling down after that.
And I meant it.
Not metaphorically. Not as a turn of phrase.
I meant it the way you mean something when grief is still raw and the person you’ve lost is still so present you half expect them to call.
Billy would have loved Tuesday morning. The room. The energy. The idea of the little “professor” from Poppintree, from a cell, from the longest road imaginable… standing in front of professionals and people and making them feel something.
We’d have talked about it that night.
He’d have said something that made me laugh and then quietly, in that way he had, told me he was proud.
I still want him to be proud of me.
Not past tense.
Still. Now. Always.
There’s something about losing someone who believed in you unconditionally that changes the nature of what you’re doing. The work doesn’t just become about the work anymore. It becomes an act of gratitude. A dedication. A way of honouring someone who saw you clearly when you couldn’t see yourself at all.
Billy always said… you never know who might show up. So be ready. Always be ready.
Tuesday morning, I was ready.
For the room. For the moment. For the work.
And for him.
Stay Unshackled, My Friends,
Stephen