About being from two worlds at once
Phil Wang has written his first book, inspired by the question he’s asked with relentless regularity: ‘But where are you
really from?’
The volume, Sidesplitter, is subtitled How To Be From Two Worlds At Once and revolves around his dual heritage..
Wang was born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1990 to an English mother and a Chinese-Malaysian father. Three weeks after his birth, the family returned to his father s hometown in Malaysia, where they lived until he was 16, then returning to England.
He then studied at Cambridge, joined the Footlights comedy troupe and won the 2010 Chortle Student Comedy Award before making inroads into TV. He was a contestant in series seven of Taskmaster and has had his own Radio 4 pilot, Wangsplaining.Publisher Hodder Studio say: ‘In Sidesplitter, Phil reflects on race, belonging and cultural cachet, bringing his trademark cynicism and wit to topics that range from food and comedy to empire and colonialis
Short tour this autumn
Mae Martin has announced a short autumn stand-up tour, entitled Sap.
The blurb for the show says the comic will be looking at ‘the uphill battle of trying to do the right thing in a world that sometimes seems to have lost its moral compass’.
And while it weights up vice and virtue, optimism and pessimism, producers Show And Tell say: ‘It’s not all big questions - there s also a lot about sloths, moose, hot dogs, love, and tree sap.’
Just seven shows have so far ben announced, beginning at Manchester’s O2 Ritz on October, 5, with tickets going on sale from 10am on Friday.
Star rejected guest appearance
Rowan Atkinson turned down a guest role in the Vicar Of Dibley because he thought it was ‘awful’.
Creator Richard Curtis had hoped the Blackadder star would play a visiting clergyman in the Dawn French series, after his scene-stealing performance as a vicar in Four Weddings And A Funeral.
But the writer got a fairly blunt refusal from his former collaborator.
‘Rowan was supposed to be in it,’ Curtis reveals in a new documentary for the Gold channel. ‘He said he was going to do it and then watched an episode of the show and thought, fuck that!