Hugo in his sandwich shop.[1]
Hugo Rodriguez is a gastronomist, businessman, politician, artist manager, literary agent, and a character in Scary Go Round
The Ecuadorian émigré Hugo was the owner of the sandwich shop Hugo's Canton-Style Eatin (located at 87 Latimer Street [2]), which he was running together with his friend Ronny B.[3] One day, in search of a new place to get sandwiches from [4], and attracted by the fact that this locality looked ethnic, Amy Chilton and Ryan Beckwith strolled into Hugo's shop.[5] This was the start of friendship between Hugo, Ryan, Amy, and later many others of the latter two's social circle.
Though sandwich making was Hugo's main business, he also dabbled in many other ways of acquiring income. Due to a hint given by his nephew Pepe, who saw her performing at the Battle of the Bands in Griswald's Grammar School, he became the manager of the teenage singing sensation Roxy Postlethwaite [6] - until he "was given the long shaft by the money men of old London Town".[7] After that, he changed the client and was the literary agent of Margo Plodz, the "world's preeminent woman of crochet" [8], who eventually became his girlfriend and moved in with him into a big house.[9] (She later left him again because of him smashing too many birthday cakes though.) He also for some time owned a company called Hugo Industries, which then was bought up by Percy Import-Export.[10] This caused an irate hate in Hugo for anyone having to do with Hamilton Percy and his business.[11]
Furthermore, Hugo was one of the candidates for the position of Tackleford's mayor in the 2005 election [12], until an assassination attempt via hot apple pie [13] forced him to withdraw [14], with the net result of his campaign manager Tim Jones winning the election and becoming mayor in his stead.
Hugo was capable of showing enormous generosity to his friends, such as when he gave £2000 to Amy as financial kickstart for an antique store.[15] He also employed Ryan Beckwith, Shelley Winters and Fallon Young when they needed jobs.[16] On other occasions though, when he felt that his business was threatened, he acted in the spirit of pragmatism instead, for example by firing Ryan as a consequence for Ryan having done an ill-conceived and quite costly purchase.[17] He even prevented that Carrot Scruggs, an employee whom he didn't want to lose, received a scholarship for the Potterton Writing Academy - by claiming that Carrot was dead.[18] In Hugo's defense, he felt remorse afterwards, and as compensation allowed Carrot to drive out deliveries with the company van.[19] (Though he probably should have left the remark unsaid about Carrot having to "burn the van, burn [his] clothes, leave town" in case of police trouble.[20])
When faced with the supernatural, Hugo often seemed to cope with this much less well than most of his friends. For example, he once left the scene with a rather flimsy excuse, in order to avoid having to witness a witch doctor in action.[21] And when he visited a faerie glen, Hugo first started to recite prayers in Latin, then lost all composure and simply ran away.[22] Even during the climax of the Super Crisis Quests, he preferred to stay in his car.[23]