Comedians with genuine global appeal are rare. Yet Nigel Ng's first international tour spans multiple dates across four continents. The Malaysian-Chinese comic who was nominated for Best Newcomer at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe truly blew up online the following year, thanks to his character Uncle Roger, a middle-aged Southeast Asian man who reviews cooking videos, often in exasperated despair. With Roger's help, Ng has amassed more than 400m views on YouTube alone.

'My hunch?' he muses, when asked why his alter-ego's breakthrough eight-minute howl of anguish at Hersha Patel's BBC Food video on cooking egg-fried rice resonated with so many. 'Nothing like it had been done before on YouTube. You have comedians on there, you have reaction videos, characters and food videos. But no one had combined all four. It's insult humour and roast jokes, with the character spoofing reaction videos.'

Television is now courting the 30-year-old. After a couple of sitcom guest roles, he stars in Comedy Central's new short-form sketch show East Mode With Nigel Ng, alongside his sometime podcast co-host Evelyn Mok, and has been developing Uncle Roger animations similar to the Mr Bean cartoons that have bolstered the worldwide fame of Rowan Atkinson's character.

Most intriguingly perhaps for Scottish readers, the comic has just returned from Los Angeles, where he made a guest appearance on Gordon Ramsay's show Hell's Kitchen. He's developing an Uncle Roger sitcom with the temperamental chef's production company, Studio Ramsay, despite Roger having been less than enthused by the Scot's ramen-making technique. 'I've done two videos!' Ng protests with a laugh. 'One was very complimentary [about his egg-fried rice] and I bestowed the Uncle title upon him. And then in his second one, I was a little less complimentary and took the title back. It's a fun little rivalry, like the one I have with Jamie Oliver. But then he hasn't been in touch.'

While Ng is happy to risk the wrath of Oliver, he faced accusations of self-censorship last year after removing an Uncle Roger video featuring US food YouTuber Mike Chen, a vocal critic of China's ruling Communist Party. Worse, in 2020 Ng was assaulted in London during a suspected racist attack, though on the plus side, it's now a routine in his show. 'I first addressed it on my [Rice To Meet You] podcast, where I felt I could find a few funny points in it,' he recalls. 'And over the year or so I've honed it on stage. I have creative control over my YouTube videos but it doesn't give me the live feedback that I get with stand-up.'

Nigel Ng: The HAIYAA Tour, Wednesday 16 February–Saturday 19 March.