It’s a schtick that shares comedic DNA with Sacha Baron Cohen’s fish-out-of-water character Borat, if Borat were Chinese and had an ex-wife named Auntie Helen, whom he dryly refers to as a “lying ho.” That has since grown to a YouTube channel with over 800,000 subscribers and longer videos that feature Uncle Roger doing everything from looking for love on Tinder to berating Londonites for having peanut allergies at a Michelin-starred food stall (because “Asians don’t care about food allergies,” he says). Ng started fleshing out Uncle Roger with short sketches posted to TikTok and Instagram. According to Ng, Mok was working on script for a sitcom and wrote a character with him in mind: a middle-aged Cantonese uncle who works in real estate. Whatever it was, it’s enough for Ng to start hiring out a small team to edit and produce his weekly YouTube videos, starring Uncle Roger, a character first pitched to him by his friend and “Rice to Meet You” podcast co-host Evelyn Mok. How much money did you make?’ The most Asian response,” he remembers, laughing. However, the good vibes were short-lived: “Then the next day, my mom said, ‘Oh, you got 10 million views on YouTube. “They wouldn’t laugh at that many things, but they could understand that,” says Ng. But when Ng’s younger sister sent him an Instagram video of the two watching the video and laughing, he was so moved, he cried. They don’t speak English that well and would have a hard time following most of his stand-up routines, he says.

The video has been viewed over 11 million times on YouTube and inspired countless reaction videos a follow-up video of Uncle Roger and Patel cooking together has over 5 million views.īut it’s Ng’s parents - who live in his home country of Malaysia - who had the most memorable reaction. “Then scraping the metal non-stick pan with a metal spoon - that kind of thing and then, like, washing the rice right after you cook it. “As an Asian person, I’m like, you see her draining the rice with a colander, and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, this is so wrong,’” says the 29-year-old London-based comic.

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