When Ian Cognito took to the stage in Bicester, Oxfordshire on April 11, 2019, he couldn’t have known he was about to follow in the footsteps of Tommy Cooper. All comedians have stories of “dying” in front of an audience, but few do so literally. The manner of Cognito’s death at the age of 60 seems entirely in keeping with this caustic performer, who boasted of being the most banned act in Britain, accused other comedians of hypocrisy, poked fun at the his own manager and took everything he did to the extreme. .
A new documentary, Ian Cognito: A Life and a Death on Stage, tells the story of the man born Paul Barbieri but known as “Cogs” to friends and admirers. Singing his praises in the film are the likes of James Acaster, Shaparak Khorsandi and Stewart Lee. Some are a little more ambiguous. Jo Brand calls it “a loose cannon.” Bob Mills says, “Standup comedy was a weapon for Cogs. It wasn’t a nice thing.”
Those familiar with Cognito will recall that he began many of his concerts by hammering a nail into the wall and then hanging his hat on it, before heading out into the audience. “Now you know two things about me,” he barked. “First, I don’t give a shit. And secondly, I’ve got a hammer.” He also threw a television out of a Birmingham hotel window. His explanation? “Room service was late.” Alcoholism and mental health problems encourage this kind of behavior. Cognito rarely performed without several combs in him and another in his hand, and he was honest about the corrosive effects of his stage persona. “It’s in danger of killing me, my Mr. Hyde,” he to say.
Danny Ward and Joe Bor, the standups who directed the documentary, have fond memories of him. “Cogs and I did a festival together where he grabbed a bottle of rum from the bar and then ate a chicken out of a trash can,” Ward tells me. Bor comments: “We hosted again for a weekend at the glee club in Cardiff. Cogs said: ‘The crowd really likes you. I don’t like them. But then again, I had just called them all out, so…”
He played a character that had no filter. And sometimes the things he said were quite shocking
Cognito could create a one-line model. He criticized people with disabilities “who use our spaces in the parking lot. If you let them get away with yours, they’ll be in our toilets next.” But the heady, stimulating flavor of a Cognito set was never about individual gags. “No one knew what the hell he was going to do or say,” says his son, Will Barbieri.” The adrenaline was incredible. When I was fit, it was as much a theme park ride as it was a show.”
Comedian Becky Fury agrees. “Being in the room with him was electrifying,” she says. Her first meeting with Cognito was about 15 years ago, when she was 19. “My boyfriend did a comedy promotion in a theater. Paul got on stage and started hammering a nail into the wall. I’m sure there are a lot of people who would say, “Don’t go near that guy.” But I found him very attractive. He was this powerful, charismatic and sexy presence. We had an affair, so that was the end of him performing in that place again!” It wasn’t the last time he helped Fury end a sick relationship by sleeping with her. How writing after his death: “He had an uncanny ability to appear when needed, like a swaggering cockney genius living in a bottle of Jameson.”
“He had something otherworldly about him”… Cognito. Photography: Journeyman Films
Although Cognito’s relationship with the public was uniformly combative, it could sometimes seem that the women bore the brunt of his opprobrium. “I don’t think we’ll see each other on the next episode of Baywatch, do we?” he asked a woman in the front row at a concert. Fury says audiences back then were better equipped for this abrasive approach. “They could handle the jokes,” he says. “Whereas today, you have a generation that didn’t play enough when they were growing up. They’re not exposed to that kind of thing, so it seems more outrageous.”
For all that its creators admire in Cognito, the documentary is not hagiography. “Gears alienated people,” says Ward. “He had flaws, like all of us.” The ultimate target of his comedy, however, is usually himself, as that joke about parking spaces makes clear. Lee explains it well in the film: Cognito, he explains, was “the low-status person” in any routine. Ward also makes a distinction between man and person. “Paul Barbieri played a character called Ian Cognito who had no filter. And sometimes the things he said were quite shocking.”
Rarely more so than in his blistering set at Glastonbury Festival in 1999. In a blatant case of audience baiting, he immediately insulted Manic Street Preachers, who had played a headlining set the night before, and then silenced an interlocutory by explaining what happened. to the last person who interrupted him: “I followed her home, waited all night, and shot her at her fucking door, so keep that in mind.” No wonder the crowd gasped: Jill Dando’s murder less than two months earlier was still fresh in their minds.
“The Last of a Dying Breed”… on stage in 2014.
Ward flinches when I mention this moment, which doesn’t appear in the documentary. “You told me to remove it, Joe,” he reminds his co-director. “We didn’t want to whitewash Cogs, which is why there’s a whole section on its flaws, but this kind of clip could have easily overturned the film.”
A standup that thrived on the crackle of danger unique to live comedy would never be right for television. Cognito was scathing about those who were. Will believes his father’s distaste for the medium was genuine. “He hated the idea of selling himself. His anarchist and maverick streak wouldn’t have let him do it.”
Danny Ward and Joe Bor, directors of Ian Cognito: A Life and a Death on Stage
According to Bor, this made him “even more popular among his peers. He was a God of the circuit.” Some comedians, like Daniel Kitson, have made the anti-television angle work. “The Daniel Kitson model means having tens of thousands of fans on your mailing list,” says Ward. “If they all give you, say, £10 a year, then you are in business. Cogs didn’t have that. He lived on a houseboat on the River Avon with his last £20 note. It wasn’t a business plan.”
I ask Will if his father had any future ambitions and he lets out an almighty laugh. “No, I was screwed!” he says. “He wasn’t doing many gigs. We talked about him living at the end of my mum’s garden.” Tastes had changed. “He never did a Ricky Gervais, claiming he wasn’t ‘allowed’ to say certain things. But he did wrestle with audience sensibilities.” His material also played differently when he reached his 50s. “As you get older, you’re less able to style things,” says Will. “You go from a smart anarchist to a bitter old man. Sometimes he’d say, “Why don’t you try a more cerebral, introspective gig?” It didn’t come out naturally, but it was put in from time to time. I would love to have seen more of that.”
While Cognito was often proudly out of step, Ward believes the landscape had changed irrevocably. “The Gears were the last of a breed. It represented the days of the Wild West. Now you have people writing about comedy gigs on social media like they’re rating kettles on the Argos website. For Fury , who keeps the Cognito spirit alive by touring a show called C*nt!, TV is partly to blame. “Paul was all about being a road comic and not restricting his material just because there there might be an executive in the audience. He had something otherworldly about him. The guy died on stage at a comedy night called Lone Wolf – how poetic is that?”
He joked about his health that night in Bicester, telling the crowd: “Imagine if he died in front of you here.” Later, he sat on the stage and was silent. Cognito had suffered an aortic dissection, a tear in the body’s main artery. As he breathed his last in front of an audience convinced they were watching part of his act, I had wondered if the mythologizing of Cognito’s death might have been disrespectful to his family. (“He died with his boots on,” tweeted Jimmy Carr.) But Will is all for it. “Dad had stopped drinking and was taking anti-depressants,” she says. “The last time he and my mom saw each other, they went for a dog walk and he said, ‘You know what? I’m so happy.’ His arc felt complete in a way. He had the rise, the fall, the hardships, and then he came to that balance. To go out like that, I think, was appropriate.”
Ian Cognito: A Life and a Death on Stage runs on the Edinburgh Fringe from 4-14 and 25-28 August. Becky Fury: Fuck! is at the Free Fringe, Edinburgh, 6-28 August.