Nigel Ng / Uncle Roger

About

Nigel Ng is a Malaysian comedian based in the U.K. who is behind the Uncle Roger persona, notably while wearing an orange polo shirt. Initially rose to prominence after his video reacting to Hersha Patel's cooking fried rice, which went viral for the myriad ways he criticized Patel's cooking. In May 2023, Ng's Chinese social media accounts were reportedly banned after he posted a clip from his comedy special criticizing China.

Online History

Nigel Ng was born in Malaysia on March 15th, 1991. He began his career as a stand-up comedian in 2015.^[1] He uploaded his first video to YouTube on October 22nd, 2017, on the mrnigelng YouTube^[2] channel showcasing his stand-up comedy. The video received over 92,000 views (shown below).

Stand-Up Comedy Videos

Much of Nigel Ng's content is about stand-up comedy and talking about Asian stereotypes. Between 2019 and 2020, Ng uploaded several videos of himself performing stand-up comedy to YouTube,^[3][4] the majority of the gaining millions of views (examples shown below).

Cursed BBC Food Rice Video

On July 8th, 2020 Nigel Ng uploaded his reaction to mrnigelng YouTube^[5] channel. In the video, he uses his Uncle Roger persona to comment on Patel's cooking rice method. The video received more than 34 million views in three years (shown below).

On July 24th, 2020, artist Lam Chop uploaded a webcomic to their Facebook^[6] page about Asian countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, etc uniting against the BBC due to their poor rice cooking. The post received more than 10,000 reactions and 19,000 shares (shown below).

Vlogs / Food Reviews

Following the virality of the BBC Food Rice video, Uncle Roger began posting more food reviews and vlog content to both YouTube and his TikTok page, @mrnigelng, gaining over 10 million followers on the latter account in three years. On September 20th, 2020, he uploaded a video to YouTube^[7] reviewing Gordon Ramsay's fried rice recipe, garnering over 29 million views in three years (shown below).

On April 5th, 2023, Ng posted a video to TikTok^[8] where he positively reviews a kid's rice frying technique, garnering over 70 million views in a month (shown below).

Banned In China

On May 14th, 2023, Ng posted a video to TikTok^[9] sharing a clip from his upcoming comedy special in which he criticizes China, joking about the country spying on Americans, about his social credit score and ironically calling Taiwan "not a country," garnering over 5.2 million views in a week (shown below).

On May 22nd, multiple media outlets, including BBC^[10] and the Hong Kong Free Press,^[11] then reported that Ng's Weibo and Bilibili accounts were suspended following the virality of the video clip. Ng posted a video to TikTok^[12] the next day responding to the cancelation and advertising his special, garnering over 950,000 views in under a day (shown below).

Search Interest

External References