Half of comedians are not naturally funny, according to new Bake Off star Phil Wang, who identifies as a part of this unfortunate cohort.
That’s not to say this 50% are bad at comedy, though. In fact, Phil is almost objectively hilarious, with his dry observations and feigned enthusiasm.
No, no. Unfunny people don’t make bad comedians. Where these 50% lack in natural funnies, they make up for in intelligence.
‘My theory about comedians is that there are only two types of comedians,’ says Phil over Zoom, with the air of a thoughtful academic.
‘There are people who are funny because they’re funny, and people are funny because they’re smart. I’m funny because I’m smart.’
‘There are comedians who just are funny all the time and it’s just how they speak, it’s how they behave, it’s in their bones.’
But Phil is more of a curious scholar of comedy, it seems (which sits at the top of his list of intense interests alongside wine and, recently, art history).
‘I can figure out the mechanics of [comedy] and the patterns and the logic of it. If I am ever funny, that’s why. I think maybe the true geniuses, you could argue, are both. But I think for the most part, comedians are divided into these two categories.’
While the well-worn trope is that clowns are sad, depressed people looking for validation, Phil thinks comedians have a very different personality trait in common.
‘I think we are natural overthinkers, because a joke is an overthought,’ he says. ‘A joke is thinking about something beyond its initial impression and thinking behind it, or reverse engineering from a punch line.’
Good point.This Phil Wang, who appears on Celebrity Bake Off on Sunday armed with having baked just the once, really is smart.
He appears on the Stand Up To Cancer charity spin off alongside the likes of Chicken Shop Date star Amelia Dimoldenburg, Good Morning Britain’s Kate Garraway, radio star Roman Kemp, and fellow comedian Sophie Willan.
‘I’ve never been much of a baker,’ Phil says. Handy. ‘Bake Off is my first real foray into baking,’ he adds. Even better.
The first and last time Phil baked was on Bake Off: Extra Slice, when he was asked to make judge Dame Prue Leith a lemon drizzle cake, which ended up tasting ‘like chemicals’.
‘I think I packed it full of bicarbonate of soda, which tastes like batteries and Prue Leith ate some,’ he recalled.
‘Her face sort of went, but she’s so polite she said, “Yeah, not bad. Maybe too much salt.”’
Usually, he’s a savoury man, you see. As for snacks, Phil is campaigning to introduce locusts to UK train stations.
‘I’m kind of waiting for insects to become a normal thing. Because years and years ago I had some locusts, like dried locusts. Delish. I loved it.
‘Never seen it since. I’m waiting for bugs to become a thing. Buying a little pack of locusts on the way to the train station. Imagine, what a future.’
When I note that it could solve the environmental problem of huge swarms of locusts plaguing Africa, he quips: ‘Big time. Imagine a plague of locusts becoming a positive thing. It would be amazing. “Mouths open! Put your heads out of the car, kids.”‘
But we will let Phil off for his lack of baking prowess if the fruits of his labour do indeed end up in the bin on Sunday’s episode… He’s at the end of his Glastonbury-inspired fallow year at the moment, so let the man recover please before hurling your X mockery.
You see, Phil ran out of things to say.
‘I did [run out of things to say] at the end of the last show cycle,’ he says. ‘I took a couple of months not saying anything, and things started to build up again.
‘I think the danger of our current cultural landscape is that the internet consumes content at such a rate… Creators are under pressure to create indefinitely, and non stop.
‘I don’t think it’s good. I think you end up saying stupid s**t. We should all think of ourselves as Glastonbury Festival.
‘You need a fallow period from time to time. You need to let things grow. Otherwise you end up making crap. So that’s why I give myself fallow periods. And this last one seems to be over.’
Now he’s armed with a kernel of an idea for his next show, all about Millennials aging.
‘I think Gen Z has a lot of things right. I really like their nihilism. I think it is really funny,’ Phil muses. ‘And as a pessimist myself, I think there is an inherent wisdom in nihilism.’
Us poor old Millennials are suffering from what Phil calls ‘naive optimism’.
‘We were born at one of the most awkward points in history for a generation to be born, and we were told that we could do anything, and then we came to maturity at a time of economic instability and the deterioration of the global world order, and this optimism that we brought up with has yet to climax, as it were, and so we are in spiritual limbo.
‘Whereas the Gen Z were born into this environment and have always been nihilistic, and I think they are psychologically built for the present moment.’
That was getting too smart too quick, so Phil quips: ‘However, they’re also basket cases. So it’s hard to say, really… These are just some of the ideas I’m still trying to explore as light a way I can.’
In his fallow period Phil rested by learning all about art history. Relatable.
‘I got burnt out, and I just needed to rest and play some video games and do a lot of reading,’ says Phil, who is hosting the 21st BAFTA Games Awards on April 8 for the second time (he likes gaming a lot).
‘I’m trying to learn art history, because I never learned any art history. So that’s very nourishing and I come out of it feeling much better and rested, and wanting to talk about things.’
He learnt all about the wines of New Zealand for Mastermind, and tells me he got an A in that particular knowledge hole.
‘The more pretentious I come across the better,’ he jokes. ‘No, but these are just gaps in my knowledge, you know. And I find it really pleasurable to fill gaps in my knowledge.’
Yes, he was that guy at school.
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‘I was very well behaved, very quiet, very boring, to the point that when I first started doing stand up in high school, my friend Nick said, “You’re not funny”.
‘And I was like, “Yeah, I know, but I’m smart, and I reckon I can figure this out.”
‘Comedy is the intellectual challenge that I’ve never got bored of.’
Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer airs every Sunday at 7:40pm on Channel 4.
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