This wide-ranging documentary, shown on the big screen at the Sosh, is about a great comedian no one’s heard of “because I’ve never been on the telly” – Ian Cognito, born Paul John Barbieri in 1958 of Irish and Italian heritage.
The film, screened today, three years almost to the day since his death, is an intriguing put-together of clips from his stage performances, his own comments on his career, and tributes from many other comedians including Jo Brand, Shappi Khorsandi, James Acaster, Matt Lucas and many more, including management, friends and family.
Cognito, “Cogs” to friends and associates, started his career in stand-up in 1985, after previously trying music and acting, and he quickly established a reputation in the British stand-up scene that began in the late seventies, and was still in the mid-eighties sometimes called “alternative comedy”.
Alternative, because it was then seen as something of a rebellion against the mainstream comics of the time.
Cogs certainly came across as a rebel, his foul-mouthed, ranting, shouty in-yer-face style offending as many as it enthralled; and almost certainly made TV appearances impossible; not that he cared. He was adamant that he was a live act, and didn’t want anything to do with mainstream media. But on the ‘alternative’ circuit he was a star, from dingy pub gigs to Glastonbury festival.
A comedian’s comedian, he was praised by many other comics for his offstage kindness and encouragement to them; but he did have a dark side, particularly in drink.
A self-confessed alcoholic, he felt, like many others, that he needed the booze in order to perform, but it also led to occasional violence, once head-butting his own manager.
But he was clearly loved by many, including his family and his sons, and he did give up drinking a year or two before his death, and felt that it made him ‘happier than he’d ever been’.
It wasn’t to last; at his final appearance on stage, at a comedy club in Bicester, and minutes after joking about having a stroke onstage, he flung his arms wide as though acknowledging audience applause and suffered an aortic failure, from which he died; many in the audience thinking it was just part of the act.
The film, made by those who knew him, is a fascinating insight into the world of stand-up over the last few decades, and of a complicated but essentially compassionate practitioner of the art.
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Reviewer: John Christopher Wood | Star rating: ****
