London: British stand-up comedian Ian Cognito passed away while performing on stage at Bicester, close to Oxford, Saturday night. He was 60.
Comedy veteran Cognito, whose real name is Paul Barbieri, was performing on stage when halfway through the set he felt sick. He walked to chair and sat down. The audience, however, did not feel that something was wrong. They thought it was a part of the act. However, they realised that things were amiss when his fellow comedians ran to the stage to help him.
An audience member was later on quoted as saying by the ‘BBC’ that Cognito was joking about having a stroke right before he sat down. “Only 10 minutes before he sat down he joked about having a stroke. He said, ‘imagine having a stroke and waking up speaking Welsh’,” said John Ostojak, who attended the gig.
Cognito was attended on stage by doctors who pronounced him dead. He was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, but by that time it was too late.
Cognito has been a stand-up comedian since the mid-eighties. He won the ‘Time Out Award’ for Stand-up Comedy in 1999.
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.”