Joking aside, I literally almost died on stage

SIX YEARS ON, EMMANUEL SONUBI CAN FINALLY SEE THE FUNNY SIDE OF HIS NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE, WRITES GEORGE KAPLAN

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WHEN comedians talk of dying on stage, they are typically recalling how an appearance was met with silence or outright hostility.

But not so Emmanuel Sonubi, who found himself actually close to death while in the middle of a routine.

“It was at the end of the gig and I just couldn't breathe, I couldn’t breathe at all,” he says of the incident, which happened while he was on stage in Dubai in 2019.

“It felt like I was inhaling glass -inhaling glass while drowning - and it was such a surreal experience, because at that point, all I could think of was I want to go home. I didn’t think about the hospital or anything like that, I thought I just want to get home.”

Flying back to the UK, the distressed comic found himself sitting by two paramedics, who immediately spotted something was seriously wrong.

“They got me oxygen,’ he recalls, “and I was on oxygen for the whole flight.”

After touchdown, Emmanuel then spent several weeks in intensive care before being released. But then things took another downturn when he suffered a mini stroke.

“It changed my outlook on everything,” he says of the incident which, six years on, forms the foundation of his new live show, Life After Near Death.