Comedian's horrifying death on stage moments after making prophetic joke

 When the audience filed into the Lone Wolf Comedy Club on that evening in 2019, nobody could have anticipated they were about to witness the death of the very comedian they had come to see.

Paul Barbieri was 60 and performed under the stage name Ian Cognito, a persona through which he had forged a considerable reputation within the comedy world.

Amongst his many accomplishments, Ian claimed the Time Out Award for Stand-up Comedy in 1999, was regularly compared to legends such as Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks and Jerry Sadowitz, and consequently achieved cult status amongst fellow comedians.

On that tragic night in Bicester, Oxfordshire, Ian joked to the crowd as part of his regular set about suffering a stroke, quipping: "Imagine having a stroke and waking up speaking Welsh."

Within minutes, however, the atmosphere turned deeply unsettling. Audience member John Ostojak later recalled to the BBC that Ian had "sat on a chair and laid back for five minutes", reports the Daily Star.

Assuming this was simply part of the act, those in attendance remained in their seats, completely oblivious that anything was amiss. The horrifying reality soon became apparent, with Ostojak noting that audience members " came out feeling really sick", having "sat there for five minutes watching him, laughing at him."

Upon sitting down mid-performance, Ian had suffered an aortic dissection - or a tear to the body's main artery - as confirmed by the subsequent autopsy.

According to The Guardian, he had been taking medication for a heart condition in the period leading up to the incident. It didn't take long before tributes from prominent comedy figures began flooding in.

Jimmy Carr posted on social media that his fellow comedian had passed away "literally" on stage, which he regarded as the ultimate "commitment to comedy".

Others, including Shappi Khorsandi and Rufus Hound, hailed him as amongst the finest of live stand-up performers and extended their sympathies to Ian's family.

Three years afterwards, speaking to The Guardian before a documentary about his father's life - entitled Ian Cognito: A Life and a Death on Stage - his son Will Barbieri looked back on his father's final months. During that difficult time, he disclosed, Ian had stopped drinking completely and was on antidepressants.

Regarding his dad's death, Will said he felt he "had the rise, the fall, the hardships and then he'd reached this equilibrium. To go out like that, I think, was fitting."

He continued: "The last time he and my mum saw one another, they went dog-walking and he told her: 'You know what? I'm really happy."