Uncle Roger comedian Nigel Ng’s journey from viral videos to restaurants and a cookbook

Nigel Ng Kin-ju is in Los Angeles, adjusting a coffee grinder and apologising for the noise, when he tries to account for the past seven years over the phone. The voice on the line is his own – not the exaggerated Cantonese-inflected pidgin English of Uncle Roger, his orange-polo-wearing alter ego who famously roasted a BBC egg-fried rice tutorial in 2020 – but the measured, faintly amused tone of a 35-year-old Malaysian who still seems to be watching his own plot unfold from a slight...