Nigel Ng is a man going places. He is mid-way through his Haiyaa world comedy tour having just wowed audiences throughout Asia. Next stop Australia and New Zealand!

The Malaysian-born, British-based performer has impressively built a rapid following with his comedic shtick, but it’s also the meteoric rise of his alter ego, Uncle Roger, that has been garnering a lot of attention. The wise-cracking, know-it-all character now has in excess of six million followers on YouTube in just a few short years – built on the absurd manner in which the opinionated uncle mercilessly grills Western chefs and television shows for the way they blithely and ineptly mangle their attempts at Asian cooking.

Ng was born in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur on 15 March 1991, to Chinese parents of Hokkien ancestry. His father is a car salesman, while his mother stayed home to raise young Nigel and his two siblings, Garry and Yoki, the latter of which is a professional harmonica player. After completing high school in Malaysia, he studied in the US where he achieved a joint engineering / philosophy degree at Northwestern University in 2014.

Ng observes of his high school experience, “I wasn’t raised in a very Western environment. I went to a Chinese-speaking school and in my group of friends the goal was to be a white-collar worker – an engineer, lawyer or accountant.”

Rice to Meet You

For a while, things went to script. He worked for several years as a data scientist, but it wasn’t long before his true calling of comedy came knocking. Seeking opportunities, Ng moved to Britain and began to get noticed as he earned his comedic chops. His first televised appearance was on Comedy Central’s Stand up Central in 2018. More success soon followed when he was given the ‘Best Newcomer Award’ for his stand-up comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019. Ng also hosts a comedy podcast, Rice to Meet You, with fellow UK-based comedienne, Evelyn Mok, and cites the films of Hong Kong comedic actor, Stephen Chow, as his inspiration to get into comedy.

It’s hardly surprising Ng’s Haiyaa tour is proving to be such a success – he thrives on the whole stand-up experience. “Comedy clubs sharpen a comedian. They’re like the gym for us, making us stronger, faster, funnier. Without them, every comedy show would feel like a monologue,” says Ng.

Uncle Roger Unleashed

But it would be fair to say that the catalyst, the magic ingredient, the MSG, that has catapulted Ng to fame was the creation of his character, Uncle Roger. The initial idea to play a middle-aged Malaysian uncle actually came from Ng’s comedy buddy, Evelyn Mok, but it wasn’t long before he began to develop the character. Ng put a call out on social media asking people to send photos of their Malaysian uncles. Gaudily coloured shirts appeared to be the order of the day and it wasn’t long before the Uncle Roger persona came with a bright orange polo shirt and an oversized mobile phone perennially strapped to his side. With an accent and mannerisms a composite of Ng’s observations of his own uncles growing up, the character was complete.

In July 2020, Uncle Roger became an internet sensation when he reviewed BBC Food’s Hersha Patel video on cooking egg-fried rice. Tongue firmly planted in his cheek, Uncle Roger watched in horror as Patel proceeded to boil the rice in a pot – sans rice cooker – and then strained the rice in a colander. After the video went viral, the pair appeared on the BBC together in a collaborative cooking effort. Uncle Roger continued to review BBC Foods’ coverage of Asian cooking. The high (low?) point came when there was a show about ‘Japanese Food Week’ in which most of the ingredients used by the chefs were Indonesian, Thai, Indian, but hardly any of them appeared to be Japanese.

Add (olive) oil

But the funniest moments in Uncle Roger’s oeuvre comes with his interaction with his arch nemesis, Jamie Oliver – also referred to as ‘Jamie Olive Oil’ in the YouTube clips for his liberal use of the aforementioned ingredient in his cooking. Oliver is regular fodder for many of the videos and was lambasted for his apparently inauthentic attempts at red Thai curry, butter chicken and egg-fried rice, among others. Clips would often end with Uncle Roger sadly shaking his head, saying “Our ancestors crying now”. Gordon Ramsay’s cooking videos were also critiqued by Uncle Roger, but the celebrity chef sportingly appeared in a subsequent video with his tormentor, and perhaps even boosted his own YouTube views along the way.

In truth, many of Uncle Roger’s barbs are aimed at himself, as he laments the loss of the love of his life, Aunty Helen, because of what he did (or failed to do) in the marital bed and how he one day yearns for a reunion. And there is no malice intended in his cooking take-on videos as he urges his YouTube followers not to provoke those critiqued but to “just laugh.”

White Rice Matters

But there is a deeper implication behind Uncle Roger’s seemingly over-the-top slapstick. His humorous put-downs of Western chefs’ versions of Asian cooking and the way ingredients and techniques are so drawn from another country, or just plain wrong, calls out an inherent casual disregard of Asian culture. Would an Asian chef mess up Western cooking with such impunity? It seems unlikely.

Commenting on one of Oliver’s most egregious Asian cooking faux pas – using chilli jam in egg-fried rice – Ng says, “It’s a pet peeve of mine that he would never do that with French cooking. He would have more respect. But Asian cooking? Anything goes, just whack it in there.”

Ng himself has at times copped criticism for perpetuating Asian stereotypes through the Uncle Roger persona and Cantonese-accented English. But as Ng told The Telegraph, “If a white guy puts on yellowface and does an accent, sure, that’s pretty bad. But I sounded more like Uncle Roger growing up than how I sound now. What’s he supposed to sound like? He’s not American, you know. Everything I say is lifting Asian people up. I’m talking about our food with pride.”

In the meantime, Ng and his fictional uncle continue on a stellar trajectory. It appears the sky’s limit for the irrepressible Uncle Roger. At six million followers online, he’s already gone past Jamie Oliver. What happens if he reaches 10 million? At this rate of success, an amorous reconciliation with Aunty Helen could even be on the cards and then who knows what might happen. Sorry children.

All-round entertainer Ronny Chieng has many strings to his bow. The Malaysian-born comedian and actor made his name as a wise-cracking correspondent on Trevor Noah’s The Daily Show. He also starred in movies such as Crazy Rich Asians and Marvel’s superhero frolic Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. He also has his own stand-up special Asian Comedian Destroys America! All in all, a rather eclectic performer.

Seinfeld and Study

Ronny Xin Yi Chieng was born in Johor Bahru on 21 November 1985 – a stone’s throw from the Malaysian border with Singapore. He spent his formative years in the US state of New Hampshire before completing his secondary schooling in Singapore. He undertook his tertiary education in Australia, completing a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Melbourne, followed up by a Diploma in Legal Practice from the Australian National University in Canberra in 2012. So far, so normal.

But from a very young age, the seed of comedy was planted when he began to soak up the humour from American ’90s sit-coms. “I saw Seinfeld on TV and told my mum that would be something cool to try one day, and she was like, OK, ‘Here is a five-year-old telling me what they want to be when they grow up’ sort of thing, and what would they know, right!” says Chieng.

And then, towards the end of his graduate degree, the transformation began to take place – as his desire to make people laugh began to take hold.
“What happened was, in my final year of university in Australia, there was a campus comedy competition, and I felt like it was something I could do. I won that competition, and I kept doing it, and I couldn’t get a job in law. So, I just kept doing comedy.”

Lucky Bit

Chieng didn’t have to wait long for his big break, riffing alongside The Daily Show host Trevor Noah at the Australian Comedy Festival in Melbourne in 2013. Chieng subsequently auditioned for the high-rating show and become its roving correspondent. His in-your-face style and quick-witted repartee when he accosted the average Joe in the street – mic in hand – on whatever happens to be the hottest topic of the day made him an instant hit with audiences in the US and internationally. Chieng has been a regular on the show since 2015. Despite the success, Chieng has kept his feet on the ground and is mindful of differences between the character he is portraying as correspondent and his true self.

“I’m made of dead stars, I eat a lot of fruits, and I hate peak period travel, as opposed to my character on The Daily Show, who is made of jello, eats vegan and loves camping,” observes Chieng. His role as a permanent fixture on Trevor Noah’s show prompted Chieng to move to New York with his Vietnamese-Australian sweetheart Hannah Pham, where the couple married on 9 September 2016.

Racist Furore

His time on The Daily Show was not without scandal. In late 2016, he become embroiled in controversy when he took umbrage with comments from Jesse Watters, who made what he considered disparaging remarks about residents in New York’s Chinatown. Chieng engaged in a strongly worded barrage against the widely watched Fox News conservative political commentator.

Chieng observed on the issue: “I think when people talk about race relations in America, they talk about African-American and white people. Asians are not often brought into the conversation. But there’s a historical legacy of issues between them. It’s hard to be like, ‘What about us?’ But we are a little underrepresented.”

On the Up

Controversies aside, Chieng quickly established a career in his own right and began to build an impressive list of performances in movies and on television. The first of these to make people sit up and take notice was his role in the critically acclaimed TV comedy, Ronny Chieng International Student (2017), where he essentially plays himself and explores the trials and tribulations of an Asian university student in Australia.

From here, Hollywood beckoned. Chieng scored his first significant major movie role in Crazy Rich Asians (2021), where he plays a precocious – and at times insufferable – cousin to the film’s leads, Nick Young and Astrid Leong. He continued to build his cinematic credentials and broke out with his first action role as Jay Wayne in the mega blockbuster Godzilla vs. Kong (2021).

This was followed up in the same year with a role in the Marvel superhero extravaganza, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. This represented a major breakthrough for Asian representation in the Marvel Comics franchise. The film stars a host of Asian actors in the major roles, including Simu Liu, Awkwafina, Benedict Wong and Michelle Yeoh – of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) fame.

Chieng had a small but important role playing the character of Jon Jon in Shang-Chi and proudly drew on his Singaporean roots to flesh out the part, especially in his combination of Mandarin and English in the dialogue.

“We didn’t know which (language) would play well so I just did it in both. But isn’t that exactly how we roll in Singapore, right? We just go in and out – sometimes we speak Chinese, sometimes we speak English. We just weave in and out.”

Not one to rest on his laurels, Chieng is also slated for the lead role in the soon-to-be released fantasy film, Helvellyn Edge, directed by Joah Jordan. Chieng is also keeping his comedic talons sharpened with his own Netflix stand-up special, Asian Comedian Destroys America!

Bruce Lee Watch

Away from the big screen, Chieng is a passionate watch collector. It’s a suitable pastime for one who relies on impeccable timing to deliver the perfect punch line. He has accumulated an impressive selection of timepieces, including a 1984 Rolex that he inherited from his late father. But Chieng’s pride and joy are his two rare Seiko 6139 Bruce Lee timepieces – so named because this watch was worn by the legendary martial arts hero in the 1960s.