Three Great Things: Phil Wang

Three Great Things is Talkhouse’s series in which artists tell us about three things they absolutely love. To mark the release of his new Netflix comedy special, Wang in There, Baby!, the British stand-up star shared some of the things he gets the most joy from in life. — N.D.

Sex and the City
Recently my girlfriend has been rewatching Sex and the City. At the start, I did that classic guy thing of standing at the side with my arms folded, pretending I was busy, but I then ended up just watching with her. And I then learned that I love Sex and the City! I think it’s a great show with great characters and great ideas, and I am now obsessed with Mr. Big.

I want to be Mr. Big when I grow older. That’s the aesthetic and the body type I’m going to lean hard into. Carrie is intolerable, so having a girlfriend like her is not the element of his life that I want. I just want to hit the age when I can start wearing suits as everyday clothing, but I don’t think I’m quite there yet. I’ve grown a mustache now, though, as a way of hopefully transitioning into my suit-wearing era, because I only recently started to get into buying, enjoying and finding nice clothes. I used to hate clothes. It’s not that I’d run around naked, I just hated shopping for clothes. I hated thinking about clothes. Now I’m really into the aesthetics of clothing, of putting together an outfit and wearing smart clothes. I’d love to wear a suit every day, and Mr. Big pulls it off. He has that suaveness about him and he’s so classy.

Before we started watching Sex and the City, my girlfriend and I also watched Girls. I think the thing I’ve learned from all this is that I love TV shows predominantly aimed at women. It’s fascinating – you learn so much! Men always talk about how mysterious women are. Just watch Girls and Sex and the City: it answers a lot of questions.

Long Train Rides
I love long train rides where I have a book and my phone and podcasts and my iPad and my Nintendo Switch … and then I don’t touch any of them, I just look out the window for three hours. That’s great.

Being on a train is sort of being in liminal space, because you’re making progress without doing anything, which is probably my favorite feeling in the world. Being on a plane doesn’t feel like that, because you’re not seeing the world rush past. You don’t feel the progress. But on a train, you look out the window and it’s like a loading bar. You’re getting closer to your destination and you’re making progress, but you’re not personally doing anything. That’s what’s awesome about it.

What I find most captivating about these train rides is how things change. Every year, comedians make the trip up to the Edinburgh Comedy Festival: you start off in London, then you exit London and go through horrible, disgusting England, which is all ghastly – ugly and drippy and droppy and grey. From time to time, you get teased with fields and forests, but then you hit another horrible English town and you realize, Oh no, we’re still in England. And then you get to Durham, which has castles and a cathedral and is like something out of Game of Thrones. And then you go into Newcastle, which is beautiful, with its bridges over the Tyne. And then you get into Scotland, and that’s when it really pays off. It’s all sea views and sheep and grass, and it’s just majestic. Watching that change is something you don’t get in a plane. I love that.

And if a train ride goes smoothly, that’s such a miracle, because there’s such a good chance it’s going to be horrible. What’s addictive about gambling is that you might lose and what’s thrilling about a good train ride is that it could have been the worst day of your life, but it wasn’t. It’s such a relief.

Chasing Animals Out of My Garden
Something I’ve grown to love recently is chasing away animals. I’ve got a garden now and I always assumed that having a garden will bring me closer to nature. But what it’s actually done is make me hate nature. I hate squirrels now. And foxes.

The squirrels have been digging holes in my lawn to hide nuts, like they’re in a cartoon. And so now I run out like a farmer in a nursery rhyme. I shake my fist at squirrels and I clap at cats, and I try to kick foxes. I hate the animals. I thought we were in charge! But no.

I think Fleabag did us a disservice, because it romanticized the urban fox, gave him a lot of good press. I feel like people are less willing to fight them now, but they’re always screaming and having sex outside. Their sex is so loud and it doesn’t sound fun, though I guess it must be. They’re just screaming all the time.

I’ve seemingly reached a stage in my life where one of pleasures is chasing animals out of my garden. I thought my 30s would be more sophisticated than this, but I should just buy a pitchfork to complete the look, like the man in the American Gothic painting. That’s going to be me, keeping nature at bay in South London.

I’ve bought so many things to try and keep the animals away, like stinky crystal gels and a little machine that goes bleep. It’s horrible. Every time I go out in the garden now, I can hear it and it’s ruined the garden for me. This is essentially a cautionary tale about a man whose battle against the animals has overtaken him and ruined his own life. But the foxes have stopped coming to my garden, so I feel like I’m defeating nature in my environment and winning it for the human race.

Featured image of Phil Wang by Matt Crockett, courtesy Netflix.