Comedian John Shaw is diagnosed with dementia

In a post on Facebook, “Farmen kjendis” profiler and comedian Dora Thorhalsdóttir (51) shared that her ex-boyfriend and comedian John Shaw (58) has dementia. Shaw and Thorhalsdóttir have two children.

“The one in the yellow shirt is John Shaw and my children's father. He's the one who was diagnosed with dementia last week. Everyone around him knows which way it's going, but it's gotten worse in a short time, so there aren't many moments like the one we got today,” Thorhalsdóttir said in a family photo. writes in the introduction.

Also, Thorhalsdóttir explains that the openness about the diagnosis is what Shaw himself prefers.

Because he doesn't want to be ashamed or hide. “Even a 58-year-old man can get this terrible disease,” he continues, encouraging anyone who doesn't have something to say to Shaw to contact him.

Dagbladet has been granted permission to reproduce Thorhalsdóttir's Facebook post. John Shaw knows that Dagbladet is covering up the case.

In that post, Thorhalsdóttir writes that society is good at hiding illness, and that it is only when life is over that the deceased tells how much they meant in obituaries or funerals.

“I'm not saying John will die soon, but soon! “I'd say he's depressed and would have appreciated someone saying something nice while he was mentally here,” she writes.

In closing, the comedian and his family make a strong plea to “remember to tell everyone you love – before it's too late – that you are there.”

John died – rose

In a photo shared by Thorhalsdóttir on Facebook, Jan Schau (center) is with his four children, Aurora, Sara, Elias, Vilje and stepdaughter Martin, and his two ex-girlfriends, Dora Thorhalsdóttir and Marianne.

Love for family flows in the comment section.

Thorhalsdóttir tells Tagbladet that the family has known for a long time that something was wrong with Shaw.

– It takes time to get a diagnosis because he had brain damage (a brain injury that is not congenital, but occurs during life, ed. Note) which came in 2004 in connection with a coma. Some similarities with dementia, which she has been around for some time, she openly shares.

And Shaw, 51, explains that she wants others to know about the disease when she meets him.

– He's always been open about it and wants to be, says Thorhalsdóttir.

Opens up about the disease

Dora Thorhalsdóttir and John Shaw fell in love in 2003. They went their separate ways in January 2013 and have a daughter Sarah and a son Elias together.

Shaw introduced Norwegians to the stand-up genre and was an award-winning comedian performing 15 shows a week.

In 1997 and 2007, he was named “Norway's Funniest Man” by winning the “Stå opp” award. Shaw never turned down a party, which eventually led to him falling into a coma at Easter 2004 and being pronounced dead twice.

– I felt like I was a drunk trying to hold on to normalcy. I always walked around with severe anxiety. When I was on stage, I got a break from it because that was what I was doing. And then it really hit, he said earlier NRK.

He spoke about the terrifying incident in a major interview with Dagbladet Magasinet in 2020. At the time, Schau was hospitalized with stomach pains that turned out to be acute inflammation of the pancreas, and he had been a comedian for 15 years.

– Surely someone will be angry

A common cause of bloating is excessive alcohol consumption over time. It can be life threatening.

– The truth is, I was a hunted man, really stuck on wanting to achieve something, make a name for myself, become something. The people I became close to were friends, people the organizer promised me and who I had a beer with after the show, he told Dagbladet Magasinet at the time.

During his five weeks in a coma, John was declared dead twice, but he survived – after death, his life took a new turn.