The standup comedian on growing up in Borneo and Bath, living like Batman at Cambridge, and his lifelong fascination with wrestling
Born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1990, Phil Wang is a comedian, actor and writer. He spent most of his childhood in Malaysia with his English mother, Chinese-Malaysian father and sister, before his family moved back to Bath in his teens. Wang studied engineering at Cambridge University, where he was president of the Footlights. After winning two student comedy awards, he began comedy professionally. His TV appearances include Taskmaster and Have I Got News for You, with acting roles in Wonka and 3 Body Problem. Wang’s second Netflix special, Wang in There, Baby! is out now.
This is me, sitting on a tricycle in my childhood home in Kota Kinabalu, north Borneo, where I lived until I was 16. Dad designed the house: he’s an engineer, and wanted it to look like a tree, so we had a big green tiled roof. Behind me is a folded ping-pong table; I think we used it once. From time to time, the nearby river would overflow and flood the basement, where this was taken. We wouldn’t be able to play down there because it’d be full of centipedes and snakes.
