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Comedian Ian Cognito dies onstage
And the audience thinks it's part of his act O_o
Minutes after joking about the unimaginable horror of having a stroke and then waking up speaking Welsh, the 60 year old sat down on a chair and laid back.
The audience, already whipped up from what had been a hugely successful set, was in fits of laughter.
There they sat, laughing, for several minutes, unaware that Cognito, 60, had died.
Eventually, a nervous-looking compere shuffled on to the stage at the Atic bar in Bicester and asked someone to call an ambulance.
Panicked staff attempted to perform chest compressions and asked the audience to leave while they waited for paramedics.
Ian Cognito dying makes me think of all the wonderful comedians in our community over these 20 years. I love you all. I mean that. Time goes by and we don’t gig together and i think that eventually we will...and then this happens.
— Shappi Khorsandi (@ShappiKhorsandi) 12 April 2019
John Ostojak, who attended the gig, told the BBC: “Only 10 minutes before he sat down he joked about having a stroke. He said, ‘imagine having a stroke and waking up speaking Welsh’.”
Ostojak explained: “We thought it was part of the act. We came out feeling really sick, we just sat there for five minutes watching him, laughing at him.”
Cognito, whose real name was Paul Barbieri, had been performing on the stand-up scene since the mid-Eighties. He won the Time Out Award for Stand-up Comedy in 1999.
He was a notorious hell-raiser with a solid fanbase with whom he enjoyed a cult status.
Paying tribute to his fellow comedian, Rufus Hound wrote on Twitter: “Ian Cognito has died. That might not mean much to you if your knowledge of stand-up only extends to a screen but for anyone who ever sat down in a comedy club and saw him on a stage – this is a hard one. Puck grew up and now Puck is dead. We have lost one of the greats.”
Jimmy Carr spoke about his relationship with Cognito, tweeting: “I'll never forget his kindness when I started out and how god damn funny he was.”
Luisa Omielan, a fellow stand-up, said: "I saw him once on stage years ago and was in awe, he was as epic as his reputation. Rebellious and brilliant. "He even died like a legend. Far, far too soon."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comedy/c...hink-part-act/
Minutes after joking about the unimaginable horror of having a stroke and then waking up speaking Welsh, the 60 year old sat down on a chair and laid back.
The audience, already whipped up from what had been a hugely successful set, was in fits of laughter.
There they sat, laughing, for several minutes, unaware that Cognito, 60, had died.
Eventually, a nervous-looking compere shuffled on to the stage at the Atic bar in Bicester and asked someone to call an ambulance.
Panicked staff attempted to perform chest compressions and asked the audience to leave while they waited for paramedics.
Ian Cognito dying makes me think of all the wonderful comedians in our community over these 20 years. I love you all. I mean that. Time goes by and we don’t gig together and i think that eventually we will...and then this happens.
— Shappi Khorsandi (@ShappiKhorsandi) 12 April 2019
John Ostojak, who attended the gig, told the BBC: “Only 10 minutes before he sat down he joked about having a stroke. He said, ‘imagine having a stroke and waking up speaking Welsh’.”
Ostojak explained: “We thought it was part of the act. We came out feeling really sick, we just sat there for five minutes watching him, laughing at him.”
Cognito, whose real name was Paul Barbieri, had been performing on the stand-up scene since the mid-Eighties. He won the Time Out Award for Stand-up Comedy in 1999.
He was a notorious hell-raiser with a solid fanbase with whom he enjoyed a cult status.
Paying tribute to his fellow comedian, Rufus Hound wrote on Twitter: “Ian Cognito has died. That might not mean much to you if your knowledge of stand-up only extends to a screen but for anyone who ever sat down in a comedy club and saw him on a stage – this is a hard one. Puck grew up and now Puck is dead. We have lost one of the greats.”
Jimmy Carr spoke about his relationship with Cognito, tweeting: “I'll never forget his kindness when I started out and how god damn funny he was.”
Luisa Omielan, a fellow stand-up, said: "I saw him once on stage years ago and was in awe, he was as epic as his reputation. Rebellious and brilliant. "He even died like a legend. Far, far too soon."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comedy/c...hink-part-act/