Lizzy Who is a comedian best known for her stand-up special Hoo Cares!? Here, the 40-year-old opens up about her comedy ambitions, the male mentors who inspired her and how her parents reacted to their first kiss.
“I was in my 30s when I told my parents I wanted to be a comedian. There were mixed reactions.”
My maternal grandfather, Jack, owned a grocery store in Toowoomba, Queensland. He had an entrepreneurial spirit, and the store’s tagline read, “Where smart economics happens.” He was a charismatic man living with bipolar disorder.
My paternal grandfather, Chee Bow, was a Chinese-Malaysian who spoke five languages and worked as an interpreter for the Japanese during World War II. He had to translate the terrible news that someone was going to be killed. It really affected him. They didn’t know what PTSD was at the time, but he definitely had it. He died when my father was 16 years old.
My father, Chan, enrolled in a military college in Malaysia when he was 13 years old. Because of this, I often moved away from my parents’ home, so I did not bear the brunt of my father’s violence. He was in the military until his early 20s.
My father met my mother, Barbara, while backpacking through Malaysia in the 70s. She was hitchhiking when he drove her and her friend to Penang. They fell in love and my eldest brother Simon was born in Malaysia. Four years later they moved to Australia and my younger brother Damien and I were born.
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My father was very kind and would braid my hair. Not your typical Asian father. He was the one who would write you poems, sing you songs, and cook you meals.
My first job in Australia was as a porter on Daydream Island (Whitsunday Islands) in the late 70s. He went with his mother’s younger brother while his mother lived in a caravan park in Mackay with her three-year-old son. Dad won a talent show on the island and became a celebrity.
Eventually mom and dad moved back to Brisbane and mom got a job as a teacher. His father worked pumping gas at a gas station, won Bowser’s top-selling award, then worked in auto parts sales before starting his own business.
