F-B-F.org -

the public is proving increasingly willing to suspend its disbelief and pretend it’s on holiday. It will be hospitals next, bus garages, morgues and insurance offices.No closed-down factory is so redundant it can’t compete with Westminster Abbey. Scarcely have we said goodbye to the drudgery of the machine-belt economy than we are overcome by nostalgia for it. Back we trudge to the steel yards and slag heaps to see for ourselves just how miserable it really was, and watch former employees re-employed to dress up as former employees to re-enact their former employment. Often they aren’t very convincing and have to be replaced by actors, of which the heritage industry employs more than the West End theatre. Ironically, in this artificial age, acting isn’t the bad career choice your dad once told you it was, just before he died of iron girder worker’s toe.The day will come when a group of Japanese holiday makers is killed in a Welsh mining accident, or a party of French schoolchildren is caught breaking out of Wormwood Scrubs.

None of this will stop the heritage industry mushrooming still further. Soon we will all open our homes to the public, with our own visitor centres in the front garden selling Toby jugs of the wife and T-shirts saying, “I HAVE SEEN THE ROBERTSONS OF CARSHALTON”. Then we’ll all visit each other’s houses all the time, serving each other cups of tea Just like the old days. Age – he is now pushing 40 – has done little to dim the fire that burns within Ian Cognito “I’m like Marlon Brando in The Wild One. When he’s asked, ‘What are you rebelling against?’, he says, ‘What have you got?’ I open the papers in the morning and think, ‘What shall I get wound up about today?’.”

This level of passion certainly makes for an incendiary stage-show. “Even people who thoroughly enjoy it say it’s intense,” Cognito admits. “The theatre is one of the few times when you have to shut up and listen.

If you don’t, I’m going to jump on you.”
Back after two years away from the circuit writing a book called A Comedian’s Tale, Cognito has lost none of his fervour. Here, for instance, is his opinion of most other stand-ups: “I used to think comedians had freedom of speech and a responsibility to say things that others wouldn’t But a lot of comedians have abrogated that responsibility. During the Thatcher years, most of them just took the money and ran.”Waving his metaphorical banner, he acknowledges that he is that most unfashionable of things, a political comedian “I’m all for a revolution I’m an anarchist Strong people need no leaders. I don’t have a codified political stance, but the wrong people are in power. They wouldn’t be there if they weren’t the wrong people.”In his new show, Ian Cognito’s Ukelele, he focuses on “what it is like to be a man these days It’s not as much fun as it used to be. Plenty of people are writing about male angst as we try to find ourselves.

Suicide is one of the top three killers of men aged between 16 and 25. With the demise of religion, we’re all having trouble finding out what we’re all about. I can plough the furrow of what it’s like to be unlucky and unfavoured. I speak up for that type of person.”A difficult and dangerous stage presence – in the past he has been banned from the Comedy Store and was knocked out after insulting another comedian’s wife – Cognito is still hard to ignore, a raging bull goaded by a flaming sense of injustice.

“I haven’t sold out – there’s not many of us left that haven’t That’s why I got into alternative comedy in the first place I’m not afraid to use the word ‘alternative’. It’s like those people who are taking the tobacco companies to court. I want to take the Establishment to court for getting me hooked on alternative comedy and then not delivering.”‘Ian Cognito’s Ukulele’ is at the Union Chapel Project Studio Theatre, Compton Ave, London, N1 (0171-226 1686) tonight and tomorrow. Our monthly series continues with stand-up comic and TV presenter Bob Mills, who recalls his formative days at the carwash

So after all this time, what the kid said to the yuppie is still the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.
And let me tell you this I’m a man who has heard some very funny things.