Comedian Geoff Norcott opens up about loss of baby daughter

Geoff Norcott has opened up about the death of his daughter, seven years after she was stillborn.

The comedian and his wife lost their daughter Connie in July 2014.

In an essay for stillbirth and neonatal death charity Sands, Norcott said his wife had been 34 weeks pregnant and that they were “devastated” to be told that their baby’s heart had stopped beating.

He said stillbirth could feel “like a void”.

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The star, 44, said as the anniversary approached this year he realised it felt different than usual, as a result of the COVID pandemic.

"As the date approached, I knew the signs that my mind was drifting back to that summer,” he wrote. “The headaches, the brutal lack of self-esteem, all the while noticing that my wife is going through the same and more, given the additional burden of the physical trauma women experience in stillbirth.

"However, for all the familiarity, this year has also felt different. I suspect there are two reasons. One is that last year the pandemic was so new and all-consuming that grief was just another thing we weren’t having a normal experience of.”

The comedian - who has been on shows including Mock The Week and Question Time - said the other thing that had changed was that because a number of years had passed “the entity or idea of what I’m grieving is changing shape”.

“It’s scary because I don’t have as many reference points for that experience," he said.

"I can guess what she’d have been like as a baby or even a very small child, but I don’t know what kind of girl she’d have been at this age.”

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Norcott – who also has a son, Sebastian, with his wife - said losing a baby in that way was particularly tough as it was harder to speculate about what his daughter would be like now.

"As grief goes, stillbirth can feel like a void,” he went on. “You have to put things into it rather than take from what was already there.”

The star said the loss would always be with him but that he would “love the memory of the daughter I never had until my dying day”.

For information about Sands visit https://www.sands.org.uk/.

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