The Comedian's Comedian Podcast - Ken Cheng

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

Ken Cheng is a stand-up comedian, writer and professional poker player, but is probably best known for being the master of going viral on LinkedIn with over 200,000 followers!Outside of poking the corporate world, Ken has written for Have I Got News For You, Mock the Week and even created a Doctor Who audio episode. We discuss:how LinkedIn satire accidentally became the biggest career pivot of his lifeis poker psychology the same as being a stand-uphow signing up for an open mic with Ed Gamble changed everythingbecoming a minor celebrity in the board game worldthe realisation that the Fringe isn't your audienceand we find out if Ken Cheng is happy...Join the Insiders Club at Patreon.com/ComComPod where you can instantly WATCH the full episode and get access to 20 minutes of exclusive extras including:turning LinkedIn satire into corporate gigs and serious moneythe temptation to tour again and refusing to rip off an audienceand being commissioned to write for companies that don't even publish the work👉 Sign up to the NEW ComComPod Mailing List and follow the show on Instagram, YouTube & TikTok.Catch Up with Ken: You can obviously connect with Ken professionally on LinkedIn, search “Ken Cheng”. For everything else, you can visit linktr.ee/kencheng.Support our independently produced Podcast from only £3/month at Patreon.com/ComComPod:✅ Instant access to full video and ad-free audio episodes✅ 20 minutes of exclusive extra content with Ken✅ Early access to new episodes where possible✅ Exclusive membership offerings including Stu&AsPLUS you’ll get access to the full back catalogue of extras you can find nowhere else!Everything I'm up to: Come and see me LIVE including dates in Bristol, London, Manchester, Stoke, Marlborough and Mach! Find out all the info and more at stuartgoldsmith.com/comedy.Discover my comedy about the climate crisis, for everyone from activists to CEOs, at stuartgoldsmith.com/climate. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to the show. I'm Stuart Goldsmith. This is the Comedians Comedian Podcast, a podcast designed to get inside the heads of your favorite comedy, heroes and creatives and find out what makes them tick, how they cope and whether or not they're happy. And this has been going, I think, for, what is it? Is it 14 years or is it, I don't think it can be 15 years. I think we're 14 years in. So if you're new to the show, lovely to have you listening. And today, I'm going to speak to someone who is quite unusual for this show, because we've We've got, we have all sorts. We've got someone who's the lead singer of a band coming up. But this one in particular, Ken, as a comedian, is very, very well-established and very, very funny, but also has a special thing. So not only is he a stand-up, a writer and a professional poker player, but he is the absolute master of going viral on LinkedIn with over 200,000 followers. We're going to talk about that in some detail.

He's also written for Have I Got News for You, Mock the Week, and he even created a Doctor Who audio episode. But in the first half, we'll talk about how signing up for an open mic with Ed Gamble changed his life. We'll talk about rewiring his brain from being a maths prodigy to becoming a viral comedy genius. My word's not his. And why the best strategy is sometimes playing dumb. We'll talk about whether poker psychology is the same as being a stand-up. And we'll discover the dark arts of weaponising me. the comments section. There's never been a better time to support this independently produced

podcast so you can have a lovely warm feeling that you contributed to a thing you love, as well as exclusive extra content with Ken, full video and audio, ad-free episodes and a very special episode 500 stew and a. You can find out more about that at patreon.com.com. But here is the fiercely brilliant Ken Cheng. Welcome to the show, Ken Cheng. It's great to have you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, no, an honour to be invited.

Oh, well, the honour is all mine. I felt that those were quite formal pleasantries, which is good. And now we can get stuck in. Business. Business talk. The thing I want to, well, we will do. We will do some business talk. And that'll be fun navigating that for the afford.

for the reasons we spoke about. The thing I wanted to start with is that I had never heard of the genius game and without giving anything away in terms of the narrative, it's a bit traitorsy, you've got to be sort of careful what you say. But I'd never heard of it.

I only discovered it upon my research into you. We'll talk about your incredible kind of LinkedIn content and your shows and your radio series and all your jokes, all the rest of it. But I just wanted to start with, I watched like a 10-minute compilation of Ken Cheng's best bits on the genius game and at the end of it, because I thought it's a big long series, I couldn't possibly catch up. So I watched all of that.

And by the end of it, I wished I hadn't watched it because I thought, I want to go back and watch this series. Because you, and in a way I had not expected or anticipated, have a mind like an absolute steel trap. Like I've played a bit of werewolf, which people will be more familiar with as effectively the traitors. but you were doing, there were moments in that reel where you're going, like you're taking advantage of a rule that no one noticed, that you've sort of prepped for. So can you just tell us, just sort of describe what the show is before we get stuck in because it's such an unusual thing to start with. But I feel like watching that, I really got to know some stuff I didn't know about you.

Yeah, no, it's quite a, it ties in with a lot of what I've been doing over the last few years, but essentially is one big game. elimination game, which is comprised of many smaller games, all of which have been invented purely for the show and are being introduced to the contestants, like, as they come in, the rules are being explained to view at the same time as the contestants are learning them. So every day or every episode is like one main game where everyone takes part, and then one person will be eliminated at the end of each episode until it gets down to one person and they win the prize. It's based on a Korean show called

the genius, which is, was big in Korea, but had a massive, like, niche, a cult. There's a real, and I mean real cult following internationally. Some people are obsessed with this show from about 10 years ago, and they finally had the rights in the UK to remake it. And there's also a show on Netflix called The Devil's Plan, which is essentially the same thing. It's this, I don't know, they don't even what genre you'd call it, a death game, survival game, survival, strategy game. Okay. So survival strategy game.

Yes. Because I know that that's your thing to an extent. I see you frequently popping up on my social media playing blood on the clock tower, which we might talk about it a bit as well. And I suppose my assumption is I know you're a poker player. Are you still working as a poker player? Is that still? Not as much.

I've been on and off it. Back on it in the pandemic. Back off it now recently. It's much harder than it. what used to be, yeah, since, because before I was even doing comedy, I was playing poker. I dropped out of uni to play poker. And then it was kind of on and off when comedy came into my life. I was kind of like, oh, actually, I might prefer the social aspect of comedy.

Online poker especially is just sitting on your own, just playing, playing at your computer at weird hours. So it's not very, it's not very fun. It's not very nice. It's a nice challenge, but it's not like social. Okay. Okay. So on the genius game, what I noticed in the clips that I saw,

saw was that you kind of kept quiet about it. And I think, you know, there were there were sort of levels of the way that you were playing the game whereby, like, like as in traitors, which I think is a bit more of a kind of cultural touchstone for the audience of this show. Not only have you got to work out how to play the game. You've also got to work out how to play the game strategically so that people don't consider you a target. And it seems I know nothing about poker except that I should never play it. And certainly not with you. But there were, there were sort of elements of like bluff and deception, taking advantage of unknown rules or situations.

There was risk, there was daring and there was just sort of nakedly lying. And like, you know, SpyCraft. There was basically winning people's trust and then abusing that. You know, there was a lot of that. In, I will say, an incredibly, like, obviously I was watching like a highlights reel. But I really, like, I think I'm going to get my son into it.

He loves traitors. He likes maths. And I think I'll be like, you've got to watch this. It's good for the teenage, like teenagers and young, like, yeah, children who are old enough to kind of understand games. They seem to be, like, probably, I get a lot of people saying my daughter loves that show, which is quite nice to hear. That's cool. That's cool. Like, like teenage girls are into this kind of thing because there was nothing like that when we were growing up.

Like, it was, it was rare for teenage girls when we were growing up to be into something so nerdy and gamesy. Yes. Well, it's, but the show prizes intelligence without making it dorky. Yes. I really like that element of it. It's like, oh, you've got to be really smart. No, really smart. And there's a really wide, you know, the casting of the contestants is really good in that there's not, it's not like, I'm not wanted to say anything insulting about other quiz shows say, but there are various quizzes where you sort of feel like when people become optimised for quizzes. Then they don't necessarily optimise for charisma and, you know, being sociable and what have you. Whereas that wasn't an issue with this. Yeah. There's this American show from like, maybe the 2010s or 20, or even northeast got Battle of the Nerds, which is the extreme version of like they get the nerdiest nerds, like the most stereotyp, they're all like walking stereotypes and they have no charisma. And it's kind of the joke is on them. There's some clips of it surfacing around the internet.

And they're just like, they'll just keep talking about Dungeons and Dragons. They'll be keep talking about their like special interest. And it's just so exploitative. And this was, it was nice to be part of a show that wasn't trying and exploit that image of us. Yes. And I suppose what struck me about it was sort of in terms of a line of questioning for this, as it pertains to your comedy career,

it made me think, A, I felt quite vulnerable because I was like, I'm going to talk to Ken. And who knows what his motivations are? Who knows how he might be metagaming the conversation or know more about my decision? It's like talking to a magician that specialised in mentalism. You're like, how much of this is trickery and rhythms

and things you're used to? and how much of it is just I'm nakedly giving away loads of information about what I want from this and how I'm, how do I stand to benefit from having Ken on the podcast and all this kind of stuff. Good questions. Great questions. We'll figure out over this next 12 hours of deception, dueling, dodging strategy. So what I don't know. What do you think? Should we get into this now? I would love to know if you are approaching comedy now. or historically, in a way in which your kind of your intelligence and your excitement about games and strategy games and playing poker, are those things of benefit to you? Do you see, do you, I suppose my assumption is that you might see comedy differently to a lot of people, to a lot of people who've ended up in comedy? I think now I do, but I think there were points where I kind of rejected the concept of strategy within comedy. There was a period where I believed.

I don't believe this anymore. I used to believe that if you are true to yourself and you follow emotion rather than some kind of strategy, you would succeed in comedy no matter what. And I kind of wanted to believe that, but it turned out not to be true because I tried that. I tried doing what I wanted to do. And I tried to be actually...

Like in a movie, like if my heart is pure, it will work for me. Yeah. And you stuck to your principles and you were honest to yourself and you were doing comedy that you felt was honest. I don't believe that anymore. I think actually you do need to strategize quite heavily. And you actually, well, you still can be honest, but you have to be very, very good.

But you could be dishonest about the person you are and the kind of comedy that you enjoy and play purely for the strategy and be very successful. And that kind of is quite now a cynical view, but probably the realistic view that anyone can strategize their way to success. Yes. And do you think that has always been the case? Or are you suggesting that it's a more recent phenomenon? I think it's always been to...

I think it has always been the case in some... To some extent, I think there's always a system... Like, I think if you... Like, for example, 10 years ago... Well, now it's incredibly true because of the algorithm. So obviously, you just do what the algorithm... You can just do what the algorithm wants,

and you'll probably succeed. And I think the turning point for me was seeing Uncle Roger's success, being like, oh, okay, this, I mean, I respect Nigel's work ethic and stuff and like his talent, but also just seeing that like get like 10 million views every video and it's just videos of him mocking rice. And it's like, oh, oh, you can just do that. You can just choose to do that. Yes, Roger's background is in data science.

And he, like, we talked about this at length he came on the show just before it exploded and just afterwards. Yes. And we talked about how his background in data science, like, he was very deeply into the analytical weeds of what makes a video go. And to be fair to him, he had been for a long time, such that when he got a viral hit, everything was primed to go off, everyone that visited his site. Then also it was like, all I need is one of these to go mental,

and it's going to be huge. And then bang, one of them did. So, yeah, I think that's a really interesting example of someone who has worked out what the algorithm wants and has worked out what he wants. and has combined the two and become hugely successful and I imagine happy. I've not spoken to him for a while,

but I would imagine happy. I imagine he's doing all right. So that taught me kind of like, oh wait, you can just kind of strategize your way to it. And I think I'd waste a lot of time not strategize it. I was just like, it'll just work out if you are honest. Yeah. If you make art honestly, I don't think that's true with comedy.

It's interesting, isn't it? Because I want to believe it's true, but I also am kind of delighted by the idea of, like, if you regard it as a game, if you regard your career in comedy as a strategy game, then certainly, like I've always, I suppose the metric I've, or not the metric, the kind of, what's the word, the way that I would look at it, my interpretation of comedy increasingly is like, oh, some people really kind of kick down doors in pursuit of the thing that they want. Like I think of like there's door kicking comedians. There's people who are like, I deserve a TV show, where's my TV show? And people who are like, it would be nice to have a TV show. And obviously the first camp are more likely to end up with a TV show. Exactly. Exactly. I suppose I see her.

But I've never really thought about it in terms of strategizing. Or there is one comic in particular who I won't name, but who I felt like, you can, listeners can do a fun deep dive on this comment and see if they can work out I'm talking about. I like and respect this person a lot, but I did at the time feel like when they were doing a debut at Edinburgh. And I, of course, this is my own invention, this fiction, but I imagine that they had the faces of all of the awards judges on a corkboard with bits of red string and like likely places they could run into them. And you don't think like that. And that would be like the application of strategy. In some ways, that's gaming the system.

Well, it's gaming the system. But it's gaming the system in order. that you then get the maximum opportunity to deliver your art. So part of me is like, well, fair enough, I guess. Yeah, it's all about what you're willing to stomach as a person. Like, I can't stomach doing that kind of thing, but it works for them. So, so yeah, I have a few guesses of who you mean. And I like and respect them a lot. But I think that you do sometimes see people applying themselves to it.

And as you say, algorithmically now, when you, you know, a few, few years ago I started to have a bunch of really viral Instagram videos and I could look at all of them and go, oh, analytically, this one always goes mad whenever I post it because it appeals to four different niche interest groups accidentally, totally organically. I can look, I don't replicate it. Yes, it's hard to replicate. Exactly. And this one always goes off because people argue in the comments about a central facet of the joke. A ban, outrage algorithm, Zoom. So yes, I haven't then sat down and thought, how can I put the rest of my material through that lens? But there is a financial and career incentive to do that. I'll give you an example, which is kind of similar, is every,

I always get asked to submit something for like stand-up sketch show, but nothing I ever do, nothing I do in my normal comedy actually would fit that format. So I could, I think, I think if I was more strategic, I would sit down and write something that was purely for that format, But I don't I don't work that way and that's probably an example of where I'm less strategical than because I can't just force I can't force the content to be around strategy that that well. I still write quite instinctively. I write what I find funny still but I could have I'm I'm probably a good enough writer and a kind of like experienced enough comic to sit down if I spent like a day on it to write like a thing I would thought was a perfect stand-up

sketch show submission to fit that format of act ads and stuff. But I just never do that. It's not how I approach like comedy. And I don't know why. I don't know why I don't do that because I probably benefit me from just spending a day doing that. Well, let's talk about your approach and your incentives. I don't know anything about how you started in comedy, what your childhood was like. Can you give us the headlines on this is the sort of thing that comics get asked all the time.

But just get me up to speed and then we'll try to do. dig into some of it. I never want to be a comic when I was younger until about a month before my first gig and I was living in Cambridge after I grew up in Cambridge and I dropped out I went to Cambridge for a year to do maths. I dropped out and it was a couple years after when it was kind of I mean Cambridge has always been before comedy but there was this real kind of golden era of comedy around that time. It was around 2010 I went and saw my first gig and it was it was mad around then. It was, it was like all, all that generation of big comics were like students at that time. So you had like Phil Wang, Pia Nevelli, Ahishah, like the Pinn, Sheeps, all those kind of, all that crop. And it was kind of like this weird period where like comedy for students was really avant-garde, but like they were also very good performers for like 19-year-olds. So it felt like you're watching this like crazy professional comedy, but you're watching 19, you're watching 19. know, do it. And I went to a gig and I think it was, I think Phil Wang was just like,

he was in second year and he just, it was just before he won Chortle and he was doing his Chortle set for like the first time. It was being, it was the Wolfson Howler. I don't know if you've done the Wolfson Howler or ever come across it. It was this amazing gig in, in Cambridge that was set up by, I think, someone who went to work for Avalon eventually. So he, he still had ties and he could bring back these like big comics. So Ed Gamble was the resident compare at the time. That was just, he was just always, always comparing.

He had just graduated a couple of years before. And so I saw Ed Gamble compare, and it was being headlined by Chris Addison. They would get like a big, big name to headline. And it was just this amazing gig. And then I went to, so I started seeing comedy. And then after that, there was a gig where it was like, oh, you can just sign up and do it.

And I was like, okay, I'll just sign up. And it was, complete whim. I never thought I'd do it. So it was a complete changing direction for me at that point. After seeing that gig, it was like, okay, everything's kind of veered into a new direction. Oh, did it? So, okay, so it's a new direction rather than a kind of mad one-off risk. It wasn't like, I'll try this and that might be fun. It was like, oh, hang on, I'd really want to do this. Oh, no, I think it was a, I think at the time it was a one-off risk. I didn't realize how much. I didn't think I'd always, always keep doing it. But something about it appealed to me. As a kid, I was really shy. I was really shy as a teenager and I could never imagine myself doing public speaking in school I would never imagine doing like stand-up but occasionally I would say something very funny like occasionally my hit rate wasn't that high

but occasionally I'd say something incredibly funny I was capable of like the biggest laughs in like class but I wouldn't I wouldn't make that many jokes I was quite shy but occasionally I'd say something that and the whole room would erupt so there was something in me there that was like oh that feels good and there's something that's always a good existed. That feeling feels good. But I never thought, I never thought this is something I'd go down,

some career path I'd go down. And just before we move on from that younger bit, you went to, I feel like I already knew that you went to Cambridge and dropped out because it sucks. I feel like that's one of your brand elements. That's true. It dropped out of Cambridge because it sucks. Did you, were you, like, you already lived in Cambridge. Did your parents move to Cambridge in order that you would be more likely to go to Cambridge? No, I don't think they did. Yeah, I think they just liked Cambridge. Yeah, I was quite, and then I just randomly applied to Cambridge.

It was never really a well-thought-out thing. That's mad because people strategize for their entire children's lives to get them into Cambridge. I imagine the drop-out rate is low. It's very low. I think it has a lot of attention. Can you just tell me a bit about why you went and why you dropped out? I went because it was kind of chosen. for me. I never made in a decision for myself up to that point. And people were like,

oh, you're just going to apply to do maths at Cambridge, right? And I was like, yeah. So I'm just doing that by default. I just, they kind of intercepted it into me where, whereas I never actually was, I liked maths because I was very good at it as a, as a teenager, but I had no real passion for it. And, and I, I went and it was got too hard, basically. At Cambridge, the maths is just, way too hard. So I just, I just, as soon as maths becomes hard, it's not fun. Oh, I see. Okay. Everyone hits that level. Yes, you were prepared to do it simply because you had some facility. You're naturally good at it. As a result, it wasn't the maths you were enjoying.

It was being good at something you were enjoying. It was the dopamine of always being able to get it quicker than everyone else. But then as soon as you get Cambridge, it jumps about five levels. And that's too many. That's too much. Yeah, and I decided playing poker online at that point. So I was just happy to chill and play poker, and I wanted to give that a real go. And so I wanted to actually have the time to build my bankroll, get better at it, and just spend years off playing poker. Okay. And at the time you, like, I feel like there's a couple of other comics who've got a background in poker. I wonder if the skill set.

You know, there are certain things with comics you go, oh, yeah, we all did this and you all did that. It's quite unusual that the mindset or the skill set of a professional. poker player has a sort of a Venn diagram link, if you will, Kent, to speak in your former language. You don't know what I mean, that the overlap isn't really there? No, the people got into poker were very maths-y, but also quite not that charismatic people. They were quite shy nerds.

Sure. Yeah. And they weren't very creative. Generally, poker players aren't very creative. I think it's quite rare to have someone who's into that kind of stuff, but also enjoys writing, enjoys coming up with stuff. Yeah, because I always did math and English, but a lot of people were just maths and science.

I never did science. Like sixth form, I didn't like science, but a lot of people who went to maths usually just like science, but I liked all of it. I liked kind of the creative side. Okay. And did you, how were your parents with you dropping out of Cambridge? Not great at first.

first, but eventually, but they weren't bad enough to kick me out or decide, or like, be strict enough to be like, don't do that. You can't do it. Okay. Were you, did you have sufficient proof of monetary success from poker that you could, you could go, but look. Just about, just about. Yeah. Well, before I went to uni, the, the summer I made like, within this, I got very lucky in tournaments. Looking back, I just got very lucky in a few tournaments. But I made like $6,000 in the space of like three tournaments that were in the space of like three weeks and I was like wow this is insane money and I thought I could replicate that but then it turned out that was just luck but it meant I I sat down and got better at it and learned the game better okay and then

what so you're still playing it well you became a comic yes oh so I started well for the first few years of doing stand-up, I was just doing it as a hobby. So I was playing poker to make money, and I was just doing comedy as a hobby for a good five or six years, I'd say. I was doing comedy just purely, never, never intending to make money from it. I just enjoyed the hobby. So this is Ken. You can connect with him on LinkedIn. Obviously, search Ken Cheng. For everything else, you can visit Linktree slash Ken Cheng. That's linktre.com. com.E.

slash Ken Cheng. You can see me live in Bristol tonight and all throughout March, as well as dates in London, Manchester, Stoke, Marlborough and the McAncliffe Comedy Festival. All of that is at Stuartgoldsmith.com.com slash comedy where you can also sign up to the ComCompod

monthly mailing list. In the second half of this episode with Ken, we're going to talk about bombing outside the student bubble and the moment in many young comedians' lives when they learn that the world isn't Cambridge. We'll talk about his minor celebrity in the board game world, the realisation that the fringe isn't your audience and how LinkedIn satire accidentally became the biggest career pivot of his life.

We'll also find out how he likes getting paid by an industry he's openly mocking. Let's get back to Ken. Do you remember your first successful joke? Do you remember having early facility with jokes? Because to draw, forgive me, this seems trite. But there is a way in which one can talk about, in which one can talk about, jokes as a kind of, as having their own algebra. Do you know what I mean? That it's like the formation of ideas and sort of, you know what I mean?

Like is that, I feel like I sometimes, certainly an Adam Bloom would, you know, would want to talk about like, you know, the way it comes up for me often is if I describe comedy as effectively amoral, it's just little, you're kind of stimulating responses by putting things together in unusual ways. And I would sometimes say that's a bit mathematical. Is like, does that occur to you? Does that sound right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was probably one of the aspects of seeing Phil for the first time because he was studying engineering.

And it was like, oh, wait, okay, kind of like math-see, STEM people come at jokes in a very different way. I noticed that quite early on. And I had that, knowing that I had that background, I had the confidence to be like, oh, okay, I could write jokes. My first joke on stage was probably, I think it went well, it went really well and I think if it hadn't I probably would have packed in it right there. What was your, what was your first joke?

Yeah, I was so nervous, but I was so nervous. I could, I stumbled like three words before I got to the setup. But it was basically like, oh, it was about poker and I was like, oh, what, it was like, when I tell people why I play poker, a lot of them say, oh, why you waste of your life, get a real job, et cetera, et cetera. and I just say fuck off, you're not my mother and then she goes, yes I am.

And it's very simple joke but I think it helped that I was so nervous delivering the setup. People were like, this guy's going to bomb, this guy's going to bomb and I think it was a tension

was relieved that the joke went down well. Yes, it's a very good, it's like a technically good punchline like a second stage punchline where people go, this guy's going to be, oh no, actually he knows what he's doing.

So that kind of abrupt shit. I think If I hadn't recovered then, it could have been disastrous. I think if that joke didn't go, well, I'm off at a different path. I'm just playing poker the rest of my life. So you're noodling around as a comedy hobbyist. I feel that that's quite unusual. I think most people get bitten by the bug and then throw themselves into it as hard as they can.

No, it's not completely unique. Yeah. So did you feel about comedy like, well, this is just a nice thing? It still didn't feel like a possibility for a career? Yeah, no, definitely not. Yeah, I was just doing it in Cambridge in the student scene, but not as a student for a few years. And yeah, just never had the kind of, I guess I didn't know how the comedy industry worked. I had no concept of it outside of that scene.

And I was happy playing poker. And I just never considered that you. Something I didn't know was how short the ladder is in the UK, especially. to go from, I'm gigging to like, oh, I'm getting paid to getting, I'm on TV or in some small way. I think that ladder is way shorter than you one might expect. Okay. Like, I think, I think, you kind of imagine that only one in like a million people,

well, not a million, but like a very small number of people actually get on TV. And maybe that is true. Maybe I got lucky to get on TV quite early. and stuff. But I do feel it is a lot, there's this idea that you would have to work like for years and years and years and years and years and you might never be on TV and you might

never do any paid gigs. And that was kind of the idea I had of it. Okay. Okay. So when did you, what was the first positive experience you had other than making people laugh? What was the first kind of, oh hang on a minute, this might be a goer? It was, it really

came down to the, because I did the BBC New Comedy Award. in 2015. So I got to the final of that. So I was very lucky that I never wanted a career. And then I got to the final of that. And I was signed off the back of that. And I was, oh, okay. Well, now I should treat it like I could have a career.

Whereas a lot of people are spending four, five years looking for an agent. I just spent it just having fun. And then I applied for it. I did really well. And then suddenly I was like, okay, I better move to London. better actually give this a real go. It's funny, I don't know if I'm right to visualize you meeting an agent and mid-conversation deciding,

oh, this might be a go-a-then. So what do you want out of your career? I'm just fucking around. I'm a comedy agent. Oh, I'm very serious about how I can make this. That is not too far from how it went, basically. I was like, yeah, I don't really want a gig. I don't really care what happened.

And they're like, no, you actually, we do want to sign you. I was like, okay, let's go. No, I'm more committed than me. Incredible. Okay. So that was about, so that was 10 years ago. You got onto the circuit pretty quickly. What kind of rooms were your favorite rooms to do? Where and when did you most, where and when did you most feel like yourself as a comic? Oh, that's a good question. I don't even know if I, I do feel there's an answer even now. That's a good answer. I don't feel there's an answer now. I kind of, it's part of why I don't do live comedy anymore. I don't have a physical home. doing comedy really. I struggled quite a lot in my first couple years moving to London because I was so used to this student scene, which is an incredible scene to learn stuff from, but it's so, it's its own

bubble where you can try experimental things and people go with you and the audience is kind of, they're young, they're smart, they're on board, they're supportive and they have the same reference points as you and you can do whatever you want. And that did not prepare me for how difficult comedy would be in the world and it took me a while to actually work out ways to do well within that. Was there like an early formative experience of realizing that you weren't in Cambridge anymore? Yes. So many gigs where I bombed. So many gigs where I was doing my best stuff and bombing. I think actually I was very unprepared for my first Edinburgh run for that reason. I think I was, I had actually very little stage experience outside of Cambridge.

that I was not ready for how difficult my debut would be because I was doing a lot of stuff, which I thought were bankers. And then, oh, it was tough. I really struggled with my first Edinburgh run. And that was probably a formative experience. From then on, I really was like, okay, you actually have to get good. You actually have to try your hardest here. You can't just rock up.

You actually have to learn so much. And well, tell me about what that process looked like for you, what that getting good process look like? Hmm, I think getting good was kind of gigging, getting yes to everything that was difficult, first of all, agreeing to do anything that challenged you

and stepping out, like, even though I knew I wasn't good enough for it, I would be like, okay, I'll just do these hard gigs. I would do loads of hard gigs and I'm not going to bomb for a while and it's going to be a struggle. But also just doing Edinburgh for that one month, actually helped me get good a lot. I was like, the end of around I was like, okay, kind of figured some stuff out. By the time I came back the next year, I was like, okay, I figured more stuff out, and I was able to keep applying that, because those are the toughest rooms ever.

Especially if you have like some kind of, you're, you, I, because I sold well in my first Edinburgh Fringe, despite being quite unknown. And I think the better you sell, the harder it is. Okay, okay, go on, tell me why. Well, because, well, if you're selling. to people who don't know who you are. If you have some kind of good draw that gets in people who are not your audience,

that's actually, it's great for your run in terms of finances and stuff, but it's terrible for how hard it is. And of course, at the end of that run, 2017, I was working out

what this kind of random audience liked and disliked. And then suddenly, I won the joke of the fringe. And that last week was the hardest week ever, because the audience audience had come in and they had just, they were anybody. They had just seen that I'd won joke of French and they were just, there was a complete

new audience where I was like, oh, I've sold out my entire restaurant, but these, these are not my audience. I've been building my audience suddenly and, and this is a league, these people, these people suck. It's such a poison chalice, isn't it? To win a thing. And then in that lot of good, people get nominated and then the last week, the shows go to hell. I hear that time and time and again. Yeah.

It's the same with anyone who gets a like a five-star review in a broad sheet. as soon as they get like a five-star times, five-star Guardian, five-star telegraph, and that they sell out the whole run, they just are going to die every day. They've sold out their run, but they're just going to die every single day for the rest of the run.

So we should, you've mentioned now, you no longer do live comedy. So you don't do circuit gigs anymore. No, I do about 10 gigs a year. I feel we should explain to the audience why that is and what it is that you do instead. and sort of why you're here. Yes, that is the reason.

Because you're not a former comedian, are you? You're doing something, like something that I find so fascinating is how you have, yeah, that's how you've just, like, you've, you have. Well, I would say, to put it in my terms, I would say that it's like you have either sort out or happened upon some really interesting niches, applied comedy to them, and applied them to comedy. and you have plowed an entirely unique furrow. So tell me about when that change started happening

and what it looks like, what your job looks like now. Yeah, so 2020 pandemic, I was burned out anyway from doing Edinburgh every year. I did three shows. I was like, ah, just so burned out. And I was so glad to not do live comedy. And that was a sign. It wasn't for me.

It wasn't for me. I think I had this idea that, oh, during a pandemic I was like I was so happy and I was like oh I absolutely hate live comedy and I'm just not going to do it and occasionally things would bring me back into it like I had radio series during that time I had a lot of gig requests so I kept doing it but it was just never for me it was just like I I just actually hate coming back to this um and the reason the reason why you hated it was what because it could go so wrong or that you felt bad if it went wrong or that you just didn't feel it kind of paid out enough dopamine or like,

because that's a very unusual thing to hear on this podcast. It's like, I just went off it. So you're like, well, can you just dig a little bit further into that? I think partly it was going wrong. I think all the material had started writing, like in the past, the few years up to that point, had started bombing in audiences outside of London. And that was quite a interesting inflection point where I was like,

oh, if I have to do well in like the most gigs, strategically, I have to either write new stuff that I don't believe in or do my 2017 greatest hits. I started going back to do my 2017 greatest hits in like 2023, like writing comedian or whatever, like stuff like that. It was like, oh, the only way for me to get through this 20 minutes is to bring back seven-year-old stuff that I don't have any personal attachment to and I will kill those gigs. And I thought, okay, this is this is a sign that either I'm a worst comic in some ways I am but also that my my attitudes have like shifted a lot and yeah I could have sat down and it was the same thing with stand-up sketch show I could have sat down and strategically tried to

write comedy that will work in the most audience as possible I think I actually respect comedians who do that a lot because I hate doing that and in order to actually succeed in a stand-up career you you have to do that you just have to do that and there's some amazing comics who are able to do that and stayed true to themselves. Like, I think I saw this early on because I did the lunchtime special with Sarah Keyworth back in 2016

and they were always killing. No matter which, what audience were in, they killed every day. And, and I think that is the kind of comic that I wish I could be to work that hard and be that good.

And I just didn't want to apply myself to stand up in that way. It just isn't what I want to do. I lost the passion to do that. And I just stopped thinking about comedy. I just stopped thinking about, You know, there are probably times in your life where you're always thinking about comedy. And I had those moments have gone.

Like, I used to always think of writing new material. Like, whenever I got out of the house, I was on a tube. I default to writing new material. I just don't, I just stopped doing that entirely. So I was like, well, I just, it's not me anymore. Was that, was that just a sort of a gradual process of realization? Or was it, was there kind of like one kind of embedded experience where you went? Okay, that's enough.

No, I think it was gradual. I think it was really gradual. I'd really try to get back into it in lockdown. At the end of lockdown, I tried to kind of ease back into it. And at points it was good. Like, I definitely found my niche. Like, I always do well when I do a radio series. Those records are really fun.

There's certain rooms I can always play. But then there's a lot of rooms, I will just bomb in unless I do my golden oldies, which is just not that good of feeling. And it just, yes, there's a combination of loads of. of gradual things probably came to the point was like, my life is just better if I don't do it. Okay, okay. So then what happened?

Well, I started, so the first niche avenue I went down is I started playing board games on a YouTube channel by chance. And now I'm kind of minor celebrity in a board game world. So actually a lot of my income for a couple years, it's not loads, but my main. like comedy income was through playing board games, like performing, yeah, like board games was my only kind of avenue for a while. Because that presumably, because you are, you are comedian Ken Chang, but if you're playing board games, is that a bit like being back at school where the, like,

you don't need to say very much that's funny, provided you're really funny every so often? And actually, you can spend your time doing the board games. Yeah, I think the, those challenges, So I'm on a channel called No Rose Bard, which I'm a cast member. And it's a very popular channel within its, within that sphere. And the fans, they, they like comedy, but they also just want to see fun people playing board games. And they, they like the idea of watching six people play a board game for like one to two hours because it makes them feel like they're at that table watching, playing it.

And so you don't need to do that much. much. You don't need to really be that funny at all. So you're not, you're not kind of like the comedy one. No, everyone on the channel is sort of comedy adjacent. There's some proper comics and there's some people who just love board games, but kind of, it is a comedy channel ostensibly. I feel like it is and it isn't. It kind of straddles that line.

Okay. Yeah, so I'm not just, I'm not really there as a comedian. I'm there because I like games a lot. You like games. and presumably they like watching you play games because you're good at them and it's fun to go hang on what's Ken. I haven't seen many of those videos, but like to be thinking, okay, what's Ken's next move going to be?

Because I mean, I could tell that just from watching the genius game. Like there's a really fun narrative to everyone going, oh, why have they done that? What's their plan? Oh, you know, revelatory kind of strategy revelation or something. So that was, so in those kind of environments, do you, like is that just the best job in the world if you can get paid to do something you love

and you haven't got to be funny? Because like comedy you get paid to do something you love but there's just so much risk there's just so much risk all the time there's not traveling yeah yeah exactly whereas playing board games online or playing games online what are the risks is there an equivalent downside if not a risk downside

or is it just all good? I'd say none I wish I the only downside is there's not enough of it to actually fund a year I was doing that and I was getting back into poker to fund my year and getting the odd like random radio series or something. Like I was I was barely making any money like 2020, 2020, 2023, 2024. I was like just like barely making enough through just like having the small bits of comedy, the small, the board game stuff, which you can't just do. If I could just do that, I would. If I could make a salary entirely off just playing board games,

I would just make that my life because it requires no extra effort from my part because I'm playing board games anyway as a hobby all the time. So it's just like I'd be doing the same thing. But yeah, so I was barely making any money. And I was actually like always constantly struggling. And yeah, so that's a downside. You can't actually fund your life doing it. Okay, okay.

But like I love that everything else would be. about it is brilliant. It is quite attractive. I'm sort of reflecting. I love playing board games. I haven't been able to because I'm a dad and you just get, you were just getting to the stage now where my eldest is starting to go, oh yeah, I'm quite into that. And then he seems that we were playing unstable unicorns a lot. And then he just kind of got annoyed with it and doesn't want to play it anymore. I'm like, always trying to drag him back to play it. I've got big hopes for my little girl. I'm like, come on. Maybe you can save me. But I do wonder whether I would want to play it.

Well, not like, because it's not competitively. I mean, these aren't games where you're winning money. Like, it doesn't matter. You're just fun. You're just fun with your friends, yeah. It's just you, you get paid not bad rate as well, like $250 a day or something like that. Come in, film for like three hours. Have a break.

Film for another three hours. Yeah. Play games with your friends. Like, it's like, it's all right. It's not too bad. Yeah. It's not too bad. Yeah.

Okay. So you're doing that and you're scratching a living but not, you know, not not doing great. Yeah, I was kind of wandering aimlessly, basically. Okay. Yeah. Were you tempted at that point to go back into, I mean, or were you playing poker still? I was playing poker and it was very volatile at times. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I was playing poker. I was, yeah, and occasionally I'd be like, oh, I have another Radio 4 series to it but I'd hate I'd hate writing for it because I was not doing any gigs so hard to get back in a zone would take me like ages to get back in a zone where I could write quickly

but luckily and I learned the wrong lesson because I did one I did one when was my third Chinese comedian I did and I think it was towards the end of the pandemic was a 2022 and I remember that stage I was like wow it's really hard to write but I'm going to do it

But I, and I, I, I, I did maybe like a month of just like previews and writing. I've actually got really, my fun tip for everyone who wants to write, like, long form comedy solo shows is do so many Zoom previews. Still use Zoom previews. It's, it's the only way I got through these, doing these shows is doing a lot of Zoom previews because doing, doing live previews is so hard. doing like just so hard to get people out for them you're just spending all your time trying to get people to come to them that's a really good point the benefit from a Zoom preview is

the benefit from any preview is you get to run the stuff out and see if it's funny yes and you get exactly that and you just get to yeah you just get to run it with a semi like the audience will be quite on board and they'll be quite nice so you can't get too much from them but it is just nice to run it through

because I can't run it through on my own I keep stopping. You just want to run it through and turn it over. And I did like five Zoom previews for that radio series. And actually that helped. And a few live ones. And the Zoom previews really helped. It's such an efficient way of writing.

It is particularly when you say, oh, when you do previews, you've got to spend, it's inefficient the amount of time you have to spend drumming up an audience for those previews. And plus traveling and everything about it is inefficient. Yeah. And you could show up and it's cancelled. And you're like, okay, well, that. sucks. So who was the audience for your Zoom previews?

I just put it out on Instagram and Twitter and stuff and they will get between like, I think the lowest was like 15 and the first few got like 40 or 50. But the good thing about Zoom, even if you have three people and three people laugh, it feels like a whole room's laughing. You have three people in a real room. You can do a Zoom preview to have three people and it still works. That's great.

Zoom previews are always 100% capacity, aren't they? Yeah, exactly. They're always full. Exactly, exactly. It's the life hack that got me through writing long form, like full shows without actually having to gig ever. Yes. Oh, I'm stealing that. That's good.

Yeah, chain them out. I haven't done a, I haven't done a Zoom gig. I do kind of Zoom corporate gigs, but I haven't done like a Zoom gig like a pandemic era Zoom gig. Since then. Yeah. Yeah, to test stuff out, it's like you just put it out online and go, okay, I've got 30 still. lots, just come along, it's free, no biggie. It's so good.

Amazing. Yes, I'm going to definitely, I'm definitely going to do that as I'm writing a new show at the minute. And you're going on tour, but we'll come back to that because the key thing, are you not? No, no, I'm not going on tour. I feel like there is a tour advertising you going on tour on Comedy.com.com.com. Oh, is there? Yeah. Oh, that was a 2025 tour. I've looked at the date wrong because it's 2026. Yes.

And it actually never happened. And I didn't tell anyone. Don't tell people that. I'm never telling people. I'm just going to just go back, yeah? Okay, went on tour. Oh my God. Okay.

So we'll come to that. I'll just make a little note and we'll come back to the tour that never happened. The big thing, and I would assume the biggest thing is the biggest thing in your life, your phenomenal success writing satirical posts on LinkedIn. Yes, I would say it is a, probably the biggest thing in my career, maybe like the biggest game changer, I think. And it was completely unexpected.

You mentioned like whether this is a strategy or planned. It was not planned. It was never strategy. But now I'm actually, yeah, just about to approach 200,000 followers. Yes, I noticed. I put that in my notes. You're currently on yesterday. You're on 199705 followers.

We can get there. And you are one of the most viral comics for those, for those posts. Like I see Ken Cheng on LinkedIn posts screen grabbed on all other platforms. And unlike many people's whose work goes viral, your name and face is always on it because it's in the format of a LinkedIn post. So if people like it, they can dig you out and find you. Yes. So. Yeah, it's worked out well that aspect.

Tell me all about it. I watched your, which I would recommend to the listener is your comedians giving lectures. You do, there's some LinkedIn material on there. There's some good things on there. some proto LinkedIn stuff. Yes. I think I created my LinkedIn like over 10 years ago. It was very much like,

ha ha, wouldn't be funny if I had LinkedIn, given I have no interest in ever getting a job. I've no, no, no, I've never written a CV. I've never applied for a job.

I thought it would be so funny if I just have this LinkedIn where I'd just post random stuff here and there. And I would post like very occasionally. I would, I would, in like, burst. I'd be like,

oh, for a week, I just posted. And there would be like one line. I remember it was like, I would just post like, I'd just basically come out and go, what is the most ridiculous thing you would say on LinkedIn if you were? And I would just post that. And it would just be one line, one comment like, like something like, oh, my ass looks good

today. Stuff like that. Just one line as if it was like Twitter. But I never really took it that seriously back then. And over time, I would come back to it and just post something random and people are oh, Ken's, and I'd only have like a hundred connections, which were my people I added, like just my friends or acquaintances. And they'll be like, ha, Ken's, Ken's posting on LinkedIn again. And then something happened around like a couple years ago where LinkedIn, I noticed LinkedIn

was changing the style of the, I don't know if like they always had the feed the same way, but now the feed, reading the feed, there was the style of writing. on LinkedIn, which I started seeing pop up on Twitter, like, there were like a lot of Twitter accounts, like there's one called state of LinkedIn, there's one called like best of LinkedIn, stuff like that. I started noticing there was this house style. And that was probably like two or three years ago. And I started copying that and try and parody that. And this wasn't for any purpose. I just enjoyed parodying it. I just enjoyed writing these posts like that. That's part of what's so attractive about it is, A, you just couldn't give a shit.

which is just so refreshing because for people who are less familiar with it, LinkedIn is the sort of the hated bastard cousin of Facebook. It's like Facebook, if no one were authentic at all, even a bit. Like everything in there is the next step. Yeah. It's like the final evolution of Facebook because people were like that on Facebook, end of when, I don't know when people stopped using Facebook loads, but it was like the early 2010s where it was like it had got so terrible.

and there was that there's a whole kind of round robin vibe you know like people were always posting as if they were sending a Christmas round robin all their posts were the style of like oh here's how my week my year's been and then like loads of like things that we didn't want to know um yeah and that has now moved over to LinkedIn which is quite fascinating actually a lot of people don't who want that who want to do that for real yeah the only place to do that is LinkedIn really they can't do on insta they can't do it on Twitter they can't do on yes because there's because the landscape of it is The environment of it is so different. It is nakedly, obviously, a place where people boast. So all of these posts begin so thrilled to have won an award for this. Or a thing happened in, like the tropes, which you'll be far more intimately familiar with than I am.

But the ones I see are things like, you know, my child did a thing and it told me X about Y. Or in your case, everything's about B2B marketing, which I only think you understand as a concept. Yeah. But so you, something happened and the balls started rolling whereby that stuff, like, what, do you remember what the first post was that you suddenly went? Like, did you get that situation of like, your phone's blowing up with LinkedIn notifications? I remember that before it started that blowing up phase, there was this moment where one of my posts was shared to the subreddit LinkedIn Lunatics. Okay. There was a subreddit called our LinkedIn Lunatics where they were posted.

yeah LinkedIn posts they saw in the wild and be like this is a lunatic this is an utter lunatic uh ha ha look what people are posting and that was like

January last year I think I think that was the first time yeah it's quite recent I think the first time something like that happened or got shared on Twitter a lot or something was like January last year and that

it didn't blop then but that started I think a ball something got unleashed then, I think. People started adding me a bit more and a bit more, and my numbers were going from five likes on a post to about 20 to 30 likes on a post. There was this whole period of 2020,

this was been in 2024. And then something happened in August where every post just started getting big and bigger. I had, I went on this insane momentum of writing, quality posts that were just always doing well. And I don't know how to replicate that, because that was the time where I was like so locked in and I had new ideas all the time.

Was that this August, but last August? Last August, yeah, 2024. I'm so surprised by the timeline on this, because I think you've achieved some sort of archetypal slash mythic status, because I feel like I've been seeing your LinkedIn posts for 10 years. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy how recent it is. And I count my blessings for that,

because it really like, I think July 2024, I had about 3,000 followers. That's insane. And I should say as well, for people who are not condemned by virtue of their career to be forced to use LinkedIn, like the fact that you've got nearly 200,000 followers is insane by LinkedIn standards.

It's crazy. It's like it's so much harder to go viral on that platform. I don't know why there might be, and, you know, algorithmic reasons for that. But most people are there because they're forced to be. Every post is, almost every post is the same. And you are this little ray of sunshine that is very, like it's so funny that you are,

you're skewering the audience who are reading the posts. It's like coming out to an audience and almost being like an insult comic because you're slagging all of them off for their lives that mean they're confined to that platform. You know, that's the thing I realise is actually a lot of them are, basically everyone who reads LinkedIn doesn't want, to be. I think that's appeal. They don't want to be checking LinkedIn and somehow they feel compelled

to and they're checking and a year and a half ago they'll be checking and it would just all be serious posts. Now the landscape is different. We'll get to that. But they'll just be checking and just only seeing that kind of post over again and then they come across my post and they'll be like, what is this? And they'll be like, hold on. This is getting a lot of likes. And a lot of people are saying it's a joke. Is it a joke? And it takes them a while to figure out. That was kind of the peel at the start. I think now it is different because people are very sure it's a joke. But there was a while where the ambiguity helped me a lot.

And it kind of made it quite exciting for people who were checking LinkedIn. I think they were like, oh, we didn't expect it to see this waking up. Yeah, because there's because, I mean, so there's several elements to that. There's when people misunderstand the joke, they comment and they seem ridiculous. That was helpful. And then you reply to their comments and you're very, very, very good at roasting people in the comments. That's a joy. So as a viewer, I get to look at, I get to look at the post, I get to enjoy your post, I get to laugh at some idiot in the comments who missed it. I hope I have more compassion at that, but I feel as an audience, we are laughing at that idiot. For like, how could you not? How could you not? How, it's almost like, if you misunderstand one of Ken's posts and think it's genuine, it condemns you, the viewer, because, like, how could this world exist? How steeped it are you? So we get to enjoy. I always so much about it.

I was looking at... Someone says, I don't remember the post, but I wrote down, someone commented, I'll take what didn't happen for 500 bucks, please, loll, which is so delicious that they're using an overused meme in order to comment on something. And their name is, without identifying, the name is name, surname, PhD.

And your reply was, your PhD was worth it. And it's just a huge amount of comments on this. It must be like fish. in a barrel. It is. Yeah. I get fewer of those now, but there was very fun to reply to and occasionally someone would be outraged at the most random thing and that's always fun. Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot that helped me, a lot that helped me at that. There's a lot that I never thought would help me. That's the part which I couldn't have planned for. I couldn't stretch for it for, because all this stuff is, all this analysis we're doing is after the fact. I never sat down.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I never sat down and thought, this is, This is a good idea because X, Y, said. It's only now I can realize why it was a good idea in hindsight. But at a time, I was just writing for fun. And then, yeah, that August was crazy because I was writing a post every day. And everyone was getting big and big. And there was this point where everything flipped. I think it was when I hit about 10K followers.

Suddenly my rise went like so fast. Okay, okay. There was this point where suddenly it just felt like as soon as I posted, everyone would see it. It really felt like that. my notifications would go crazy as soon as I post. And, yeah, I went from my 10K, yeah, I was 10K at the end of August, sometime in August to 40K in September and then 100K by January this year. So that was the real momentum era that August to January.

As we approach LinkedIn's singularity, as it just becomes exponentially everywhere. Yeah, and it's only limited by me running out ideas. if I could if I could because I think that was also good the the amount of good new posts I could put out every day people like how's how's he doing this I wish I could get back in that like I access the matrix it's like Neo stopping the bullets I don't know how I just kept coming up with like really good posts every day and people are like well okay this is this is kind of unheard of like it's like how can the consistency stay that high so tell us about because you and I obviously you're intimately familiar with the post I've read loads of them. For people who aren't, who haven't seen these and aren't prepared to go to sign up for LinkedIn

in order to see them. What sort of thing? Can you just tell us the sort of thing that you're talking about? There'll be one. I'll try to think of my favourite. They always have a eye-catching first line, or I tried to have one.

I think my favourite is something like, oh, my stepdaughter tried to poison me. I hired her. I hired her on the spot. That kind of vibe. I don't know how I came up with some of those back then or like stuff about like oh yeah i always like they include time travel into them like suspecting my interviewee was the one who actually shot jfk through time travel

or something like that um they're all sorts of ridiculous parts i tried to think of them as a ridiculous situation i tried to take a real world linkedin thing and just try and dial up to 11 yeah yeah or be like i i crashed my car while on the team's meeting i kind of continued the whole team meeting while upside down in my car bleeding out. And that's that kind of thing. I'm just looking at some of your hooks. As a CEO, I know exactly what it feels like to be a single mother. Or I often talk to homeless people and ask them, why don't you have a job? That one is, that was just copied off a real post, I think. Well, I was going to ask, do you, at the time, were you seeking inspiration? Because you're on

LinkedIn, you look at other stuff. And I don't, I don't even know if you're, it's possible to kind of order it by, you know, can you filter for what's the most viral thing such that you can just scoop up all the hooks from the most viral posts? Yeah, LinkedIn Lunatics was very good for that. Actually, try and find real lunatics. Of course, of course. That was actually a really good way to just create the hook for a post and just make it ridiculous. But also, like, I think my main inspiration is, yeah, LinkedIn, Lunatics, news stories that are related. Like any any of the big, every year there's been a big CEO news story and I've just been handing me content on a plate. What was the one this year?

What's the crazy CEO thing this year? Oh, the, the cold play. Oh, yes, of course. Stuff like that is like, oh, that's just in the back. That's just free content. Or like, yeah, stuff like that. And also I will ask my friends who have real jobs, what anything fun happened in the office today. I'll try and take something from there.

So yeah, there's a lot to draw from. Or I'll just try and like, I've been, actually, my quality has been quite inconsistent over the last few months. Sometimes I go in a rut and I'm just like, oh, I just can't think of anything good, but I'll post something and it's not that good. And it only gets a fraction of the likes I usually get. And then I have to go, okay,

let's get back to what actually works. And that's where strategy is now having, I have to actually implement some real strategy. But at least with this, I enjoy it a bit more. So you're, so there's two things, I want to come back to strategy, but there's two things I want to just ask about that. First is, like, when I see anyone else do anything along those lines on LinkedIn, it's completely clear that they're copying you.

Like, you must have, you must have spawned imitators, right? Because other people must be going, oh, this would be good if I could have 200,000 followers for my whatever consultancy. I don't know how much is me and how much there was already a kind of thing of shit posting was becoming the thing that was taking over because I think there are definitely shitposts who predate me who were doing like reasonably well on LinkedIn like probably not like the level of followers I have now but what like getting like shit posting regularly and getting like decent likes. I don't think anyone took it as crate as like really full on as I do.

did in those few months where I just like okay let's get out content all the time but there have been shit posters but definitely now I feel like that it's becoming more and more a thing and I do I probably do I probably have had some effect on that because everyone was seeing it and yeah so it's hard to know how much is just kind of riding that wave but or that yeah there are definitely imitators of they they can't do it they just can't do it Some can, but they can't do it. And what is it? What is it that why can't, what is it that you've got that they don't have,

which is why you can do it? I'd like to think. Is it the disdain for the concept? Like you don't have any kind of, you don't have any irons in the fire. You don't have any kind of responsibility. Is that it? I think that is part of it. I have no, yeah, no responsibility.

So someone who's still doing it while working for a company or trying to work for a company or trying to actually be a cog in the machine. They can't really do it as well. But also, I guess, no one is a, no one has years of also being a professional writer. Yeah. Either. Like, these are people who are just people in normal jobs who are kind of funny. And some people are, to fair credit to them, are pretty funny.

Like, some of the posts are really funny. But they're not, they haven't like spent years of just being a professional comedian writer. So they don't have the same kind of, I guess, I guess, yeah. just all the skill sets I've picked up in all the different comedy I've done has helped me quite a lot in that respect. So the other, well, let's talk about strategy and then we'll open the door on the other, the potentially paywalled bit of this conversation, which we discussed earlier on. Because there's some really interesting aspects to what you do that I want to dig further into. But I feel like those are kind of backstage aspects.

So let's, in terms of the content, in terms of the writing, I'm just sorry my eye is just a lit on another note I think from when you did an AMA someone said isn't it unfair for all the other players to be up against you

in the genius game and you replied yes but I was handicapped for the whole show because I was really horny the entire time and they replied God damn every reply is a banger and I really laughed out of that

I can't really write in that that was so so funny that's ridiculous but let's talk about the kind of the choices is you're making as a writer? Like, what is your, like, there's the strategic choices in terms of things you want to do in order that it go as viral as possible. And there are kind of comic choices whereby presumably the victory conditions for you are, if you go, that's a really funny one and

you're satisfied with it. Yes. Oh, it's tricky. I treat a lot of the posts like improv. Not that I do loads of improv, not that I trained lots in improv. I've, I've only done a couple courses of improv, but I used to live with an improviser who, he had this idea that he had this, something that stuck with me was he was taught that, like, when you come out on stage, make sure the first line is good. So that's why I'm all about the first line. So I just come up with a good first line. As long as you have a good first line that kind of can encapsulate the post, then, or

first two lines, then you can kind of use that. momentum to write the post and I just come up with the line and I just keep writing. I just keep writing until the post is finished and some of the posts only take like about five minutes and I'm done. Okay. Yeah. And I try and I try not to overdraft them and occasionally I'll go back and go, I can make that funnier and edit it. But a lot of the time I'll just post because I think I just like to trust my instincts in terms of writing. And I think that is how I started approaching stand-up as well, being quite an... The way I approach stand-up definitely more recently is I just talk out loud until it approaches

something funny. I just talk. I just don't, yeah, I don't sit down. I never write it down until after I've spoken it so much. It's done. That it's worth writing down. Yeah, exactly. I just talk.

And with stand-up, yeah, with stand-up, it's like, oh, if it, I had this. rule would stand up, which I think actually was very good towards my last, after my third show, or like during the writing for my show show, which is if it's fun to say, say it. That's the only rule I had, well, one of the only main rules I live by is if it's fun to say, say it. And the only way you can decide if it's on to say, you just have to keep saying fun, try to find fun stuff to say. And generally it worked. If it was fun to say people would see, would kind of, instead also agree, I think. Agree, it's fun to hear.

That's a really interesting. That sort of sounds kind of so simple. Do you know what I mean? Like, is it fun to say? And it's one of the things I think is so simple, but people don't really ever consider. Because I think a lot of people aren't looking for something that's fun to say.

They're looking for something that's clever to say or they're looking for something that fits the archetypes of a joke or fits the formula of a joke or has an intellectual reason why that is a better joke than something else. But actually, a lot of my punchlines that improved in the past were because I found a funner thing to say. And it just feels, it's a spoken medium stand-up. So it has to be fun to say.

It has to be fun to hear. And I think that's how I approach LinkedIn going back to that is if it's funny. If I'm laughing while writing this sentence, it's going in. If it makes me laugh, it's going in. And I'll just trust that instinct. It's really, that will it is absolutely. about trusting your instinct. It's really nice to be kind of reminded of that. Like, is this fun? So you mentioned the other way of making money from this is corporate gigs. So, and I suppose

there's different types of gigs. Like, I get a newsletter that you do the agony aunt column for. And I was like, what the hell? You got that newsletter, the little grey cells as you come across the little grey cells. I have absolutely no idea. I don't know whether they, I don't know whether I subscribed or whether I accidentally subscribed because I explored some other service or whether I got spanned. I've got no idea and I'm not accusing anyone. But it's so funny to see you pop up in someone else's sensible newsletter. Yes.

Yeah. Like so. This is guy Tim. His name's Tim Healy. He gets me these random bits of work for his little, his company, Little Grey Sells. And I'm happy to do it. I actually need to do one this week. I send off like four posts at the start of each month

just for so they're weekly and he has them and it's a nice little guaranteed income every month where just like a little bit of income. It's not loads because he he funds this all himself. I don't think he makes any money from doing any of this. So it's just the budget he has. But it's been good and there are people like that who have appeared and just like, we like you,

we want to give you work. And I'm like, thank you. It's really nice. So when you do, are you also doing live, like for you a corporate gig, that's a live event. Like we've booked speaker Ken Chang CEO, wink. And like everyone's like, oh, these people are cool because they've booked Ken and we all think he's funny and cool. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know how they advertise me, whether they advertise me as a CEO or advertised me as a comedian.

But it's quite a natural fit being like, oh, this is a comedian that kind of is on our world. and we'll do some material that's in our world. And I think it's much easier than when I used to do corporas and just do my best 10. For sure. It's so much easier than there's like, oh, there's some kind of law around this while he's here. So it's quite a good sell to be at these events.

I think it's quite easy to get me in on those events. And when you do those events, are you doing a set as yourself? You're presumably not doing a set as the character of Ken Check. CEO? I can't make him into a live character comedian. I don't think it's possible. I do this sort of semi-character sometimes. I sometimes do presentations in that, like comedians giving lectures. That's probably the farthest I go. Okay. And I'll probably do some presentations. Well, okay, here's my presentation on, oh, I did a, I co-hosted a conference on SEO. Okay. An SEO conference and I did a,

I wrote a presentation of all about SEO at the start. Oh, that's lush. I just did like five minute presentation about SEO and they loved it. Yeah, they loved it. It was exactly what they wanted. And presumably some of that or most of that could be repurposed for any corporate that's business. Oh, yes. Oh, I love it. Yes, exactly. Yes, it's just constantly generated material. But yeah, doing it as a character comedian, I feel is nile and impossible. Well, one, I'm not a character comedian. I've never been a character comedian. I've never wanted to be. I never enjoyed doing characters on stage or wanted to be. It's not my skill set. I could probably learn. but it'll take a long time.

It's not my natural skill set. But two, I think he doesn't exist in the physical form, the character, really. There's no actual human being because it actually only exists in the medium as LinkedIn posts. And I think why they work is that anyone can ascribe any human being they want to the post. It just exists as a post. And I think it's very hard to translate that into a actually cohesive case. character that lives and breathes, has a voice, has a look, says stuff on stage. Yeah, I think it would take a lot of work to actually do that well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Three quick ones to finish. Yes. Can you tell me your Edinburgh funniest joke of the fringe, for which you won the actual, you know, the joke that won the award and tell me how you feel about that now? Yeah, I'll tell you it. I was so topical as well. It goes, I'm not a fan of the new pound coin, but then again, I hate all change. When was the new pound coin?

When did the new pound coin came in? That's so funny that was an ultra-topical. It wasn't even topical when I won the award, because the award was in like 2017. Yeah. Oh, wait, maybe it was topical. I don't know. But you could see why. judges would love that if it were.

Yes. Like that's definitely a joke that hasn't been around for 20 years, right? Yes, exactly. So that was fine. I feel fine about it. I quite like that I won something quite stupid. I quite like that I have quite a stupid bit of laws. Like on top of everything, oh, he just randomly won this stupid joke award in 2017 as well.

Did you find that you were saying before about how audiences turn up and they're not looking, they're not the right kind of audience because they're just, it's such a broad appeal to have won that that everyone turns up. I had that for definitely that Edinburgh. I think by the time it was fortunate that I didn't stay like that for long. And do you think there is merit to awarding a best joke of the fringe? How do you feel about it? Is it just like a blanket positive experience?

So it feels like people don't get overwrought about who wins or loses it. So it probably, out of all the awards, it's probably the most harmless. It is very harmless. I think people, yeah, I think it is quite fun thing to exist. It's the only interaction with the fringe that most people have. Like 90% of people who, yeah, it's the only thing they know about the fringe is the joke of the fringe. Like it's, for a while was the only thing they knew, like friends would be like, oh, you wonder. It would be the only thing that people brought up, like friends who aren't lying to comedy and stuff like that or people who would talk about that.

I feel like it was a good thing. I quite, I quite enjoyed the stupidity of it. It's funny, isn't it? It's like having a, it's the award for quantifying the whole of comedy into something that can be replicated in a newspaper easily. Do you know, like, who most effectively managed to boil everything down into a gang? That's great. Yeah, very, very stupid.

Did you once lose $100,000 in a day playing poker? I did. I did do that. That was, in my early 20s, I was playing for more money than I've ever, ever had. I was playing for more money than I have now, I'd say. I was playing such high stakes in my early 20s. I ran up such a big win over a year, and then I lost a good chunk of it back. And I was still not as rich as I was for about a month when I was 23 years old,

which is something that I had to get over for a while. Does it fundamentally change your perspective to your value as a working person? Like, I sometimes worry that, like, do you mean, if I, if I, I sometimes worry that I might win the lottery. What I mean is, if you suddenly got a big payday, would your values all change? Like, what's it worth getting out of bed for now, now that you know if you literally play your cards right, you could win or lose 100 grand in a day? No, I don't think it, I think losing it taught me a lot. I think it, if I had never lost it, I probably would be a huge dickhead. And they told me how important it is to hold on to that money and, you know, still not lose a sense of yourself because it can come and go.

Money can come and go. But I remember having loads of money and just like feeling, oh, I'm just, it's the same. It's just numbers on the screen. I didn't really change my lifestyle at all. So at least I'll be a bit impervious to being corrupted by that amount of wealth. That's a good sign. That's nice. I remember in early 2000s, I did a Lynx advert that they then didn't use.

If they had used it, the buyout was 30 grand. And it was before I became a comic, and it was just insane. I went and had a really fun time for two or three days doing this advert. It flew us to South Africa. And I was the one guy in the advert. It was me and some Brazilian models, I remember. And I came back, and I said to my agent, my acting agent that I had at the time. I said, I can't believe I've done this.

This is so great. It was just before Christmas. And he said, hey, listen, don't spend the money till it's in your account. He said, once in a blue moon, these things go pop. And I was like, what, what, really? So I had like a very excited Christmas going, any minute now, any minute now. And then he rang me in early February and said, you might need to sit down. And they didn't use it.

That's the worst. I do. I mean, it was awful. But at the same time, I was, you know, I was very young. It wasn't like, you know, I didn't have kids that was like, oh, my God, I'm reliant on this more. And also, it did, I did have some, this is what reminded me of it. I did feel it that it perversely it kind of, I think what I used to say to people at the time was there is something about getting it kicked in the nuts that hard

that really gives you a different perspective. It did make me go, how much happier would I have been? Really, how much happier would I have been? Yeah. Yeah. Decent chunk. Right, we're done, apart from this final question, which I ask everybody, Ken Chang, are you happy?

I am happy. I'm probably the happiest I've ever been, which is crazy. Some people, anytime I ask people what your best year ever was, and a lot of people don't say the current year, but I will always say the current year. I think if you're not, if you're not aiming, aside from external factors, you should be aiming to improve your happiness in your life constantly, and I think I do do a good job doing that.

So I am often the most happy I've been. That's a lovely answer. I'm often the most happy I've ever been. Yeah. That's a favourite. So that was Ken Cheng. Thank you. What a funny old episode. That was such a joy to hear about all the myriad different ways that we can do this. I think Ken is clearly a genius. And I really cannot stress enough that you've got to watch that show. You've got to watch that show we talked about

at the very beginning. What was it called? The Genius Game. You've got to watch it. Even if you just do what I did and watch Ken Cheng's best bits somewhere on YouTube, you'll get a sense of it, don't skip to the end. It's essential that you don't know what's going to happen, but just that 20 or 30 minute blast of someone being incredible at this game, surely Celebrity Traitors isn't far behind. If you enjoyed this episode, you can get access to all the exclusive extras that you can't find anywhere else by joining the Insiders Club at patreon.com.com pod, including Ken on turning LinkedIn shitposting into corporate gigs and serious money, the temptation to tour again and his refusal to rip off an audience, and we'll also talk

about why some posts flop. All of that on the Patreon for The Insiders Club. Go to Stuartgoldsmith.com slash comedy to find out how to see me live. And thank you to Susie, to producer Callum, to Rob Smouton for the music, and of course our insider producers, Luke Hacker, Roger Spiller, the brilliant I Cave Dave Dave Dave, Dave Dave Dave Dave Dave Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave, Swaddle, Alex Wormall and James Burry, as well as a big thank you. Thank you to our two special insider executive producers, Neil Ken Cheng Peters and Andrew Kaching Dennant, and as well to the super secret one.

That's all from me. I've got four minutes left for a post-amble, so I will deliver that after this noise. I cannot tell you how invigorated I am right now, partly because I'm so invigorated, I'm incredibly busy and I don't have time to tell you, but talk about your flow state. I have achieved exactly the right confluence of... inner piece, ADHD medication, an absolutely incredible 10 days in America doing pretty much all of the things I love best, and some recent exciting news that is going to potentially, should it come off, be a lovely fun, exciting career, fun thing to do, as well as solving a particular social problem for me.

Well, more on this later. Remind me, if this has piqued your curiosity, then give me a shout in three or four months and say, what the hell was that? And I'll probably be able to tell you then whether it happened or not. But I'm about to have a chat with a photographer who may be known to some of you about my Edinburgh poster and show stuff. I'm desperate to tell you what it's called, but I should save it up for some sort of special moment. I'm starting to get a real Edinburgh tickle on since making those big changes I talked about to you recently. It has gone from strength to strength. Thank you to everyone that came along at the Leicester Comedy Festival.

including some real stalwarts. There was lovely to see some old faces from the Infinite Sofa there. Icave Dave himself. Your man there, Rich, that does the Rich Comic Life blog. Lots and lots of supportive people. And also I felt like strangers ripe for conversion, which is better in some ways than playing to the choir. Preaching to the choir, the choir are always welcome,

but it's great to preach to the unconverted heretics. Lovely. So thanks for coming along whether you're in the choir or whether you're a heretic. I have got to stop overusing climate and religion parallels because I think it just is going to get confusing to the casual observer. I couldn't be more excited. And as such, there's not a great deal I can say to you now that will probably be of interest. It's all just like, uh, uh, uh, uh, things are going really well. But you remember what they say?

Who said this? I'm famously, in my life at least, I believe it was Russell Housel, who said it to Alan Cochran, who said it to me some 15 years ago. That's the great thing about comedy. If you love it or you hate it, you'll feel differently in three months. Well, I hope this little role that I'm on continues to continue way past that. But you never know. I'll probably speak to you next week and I'm all sad. What a treat talking to Ken there about his...

Him laughing at the idea, did this go in the main episode on the episode, on the extras. A little snippet from the extras if it went in the extras. I don't remember our decisions. But the idea of making fun of people that have booked you, absolutely love it. The idea of his steadfast refusal to sort of bend the knee to any existing system and instead treating the whole of life as if it's some sort of playable game that if you work out the intricacies of the rules and the loopholes and everything else you can have an enormous advantage at. What a way to live your life. Let's see if I can take that vibe with me into a conversation with a photographer where I'm going to be completely up front about this. I don't like having my photo taken. I consider,

oh, that's my time. I consider the, I consider the process of trying to come up with visual stuff so alien to me that I consider it a big stressor and I really need lots of handholding. I think I'm about to chat with someone who's going to be very, very good at holding my hand and offering lots of creative ideas. So I'm very excited about that. The post of a spoilers was so wonderful and I loved the inconvenient time mini flyer. So I'm on a bit of a role and end of before that was absolutely sensational. And so I've been on a bit of a role of good, of really good images, I feel, which really makes it harder now because it compounds all of my worries and anxieties about not knowing how to express myself visually. And we've all seen people who haven't got two jokes to rub together,

but have incredible images. And I'm glad I've got it the other way round. But wouldn't it be sweet if the visuals and my face in them could be as good as the jokes? Let's reflect on that. And I'll speak to you soon. In the interim, of course, I insist that you retain consistent and coherent sense of self. Bye for now.