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Phoon Chi Ho is a man familiar to those who know him and unfamiliar to those who don’t. His face is feared by naughty children but loved by their parents. The closet Shah Alam man laid his ‘kapchai’ to rest when he found passion in making people laugh. Right from this wit wizard’s first performance, his comedy have always been compared to butter – ‘yellow’, smooth and if taken too much, may be pernicious to one’s health.
Since his debut as a stand-up comedian, Chi Ho never looked back (at his stalkers and imitators) and quickly gained fame. In just 12 months, he had earned a tenure as the chief comedian for TimeOut KL’s Comedy Thursdays – the city’s first monthly comedy fixture, performed to sellout crowds for the MACC (Malaysian Association of Chinese Comedians) alongside fellow comedians Kuah Jenhan and local celebrity Douglas Lim, and, being a man who takes comedy seriously, he is one of the main arteries for YCOM (Young Comedians of Malaysia) – Kuala Lumpur’s biggest collection of stand-up comedians, primed on setting a platform for interested individuals to find their calling in the funny business.
Off stage, Chi Ho is a writer by profession and parodies songs, if time permits. When he doesn’t perform, write or parody, he spends his time folding plastic bags into little triangles, disarrange books in public libraries and fighting the urge to look good.
Chi Ho entered the arts scene in a high school play directed by his mentor, Instant Cafe Theatre’s Sukania Venugopal. In his tertiary days, he professed his love for stage performances by playing a major role in Taylor’s College Society of Performing Arts, where he was either the director, the artistic director, an actor or a producer for renditions of Save the Last Dance: The Dancical; Moliere’s The Miser; Huzir Sulaiman's Hip-Hopera; Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest; and Woody Allen’s Old Saybrook, among others.
Chi Ho was a comedy virgin until mid-2004 when he co-founded the local slapstick troupe, The ComeBackKings, and had since made more than a hundred performances in the country. He was also the chief content creator and director of the troupe.
Cameras tend to have a certain fondness towards Chi Ho (an unsolved phenomenon) as he had acted in several episodes of RTM1 TV Pendidikan’s teen talk-show ‘Katakan...’ (2003); worked behind the scenes, directed, acted, produced, and wrote 15 original scripts for ‘Joke’s Aje’ on Media Prima’s entertainment web-portal: www.gua.com.my (2007) before landing a cameo in the popular online-drama, Kerana Karina 3 (2008). Chi Ho also once dabbled in theatre management as the Theatre Supervisor for The Actors’ Studio @ Bangsar (2007).
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