Wang says he’s surprised how nice it is to be back. “I do often think I owe Cambridge everything. I would not have the career I’ve had – or the confidence – if it weren’t for Cambridge.” And he’s happy to see that U2 is still unchanged: unsurprisingly so, as it’s the kind of Cambridge room that prospective students (and tourists) dream about, with high ceilings, Gothic windows, exquisite Court view and a bonus bedroom. Right now, the room bears unmistakable signs of current inhabitant George Bland’s glittering Varsity rugby career, from the Blues blazer on the back of his chair to the pair of mud-caked rugby boots propping open the aforementioned Gothic windows. The rugby field is not so far from the stand-up stage, they agree.

Bland nods enthusiastically. “I love having that pressure. That’s the reason you train on a Monday night on the back pitches when it’s pouring down. It all becomes worth it when you get to play in front of a few thousand people and the pressure’s on. Especially playing in something like the Varsity match, which I’ve grown up watching.”

The room is a little lacking in decoration, however, apart from two landscape paintings of mysterious origin – “My neighbour gave them to me; I’m not sure what they’re of” – and roughly 20,000 photos featuring Bland and his girlfriend. “I have to confess that my girlfriend printed them off for me,” he says. “That is why she features in 95 per cent of them. It’s not just a shrine dedicated to her.”

While Bland enjoys dinner parties in U2 – “Well, Chinese takeaway and a few beers” – Wang needed it to be more of a haven. “I don’t think I’ve ever had many people here. I guess you could call me an introvert. I did a lot of theatre and comedy which took all my social energy. The last thing I wanted to do was have people in my room as well. And I liked that in this room, you’re in the corner. You get the view but you’re secluded.” It wasn’t just his social energy that Wang needed to replenish. Along with his Footlights career (and eventual presidency), plus his burgeoning stand-up career, he was also studying engineering.

That meant doing shows until midnight, then being in the lab for 9am the next day – not to mention “weeklong shifts” in the library and at his desk in U2. “I tried not to take the view for granted, but it was hard when I spent six hours a day at this desk looking at it. Now I’m back I can see that it is, in fact, brilliant, as is the architecture, which I just got used to ignoring.”

Finding the balance, they both agree, is tricky: Bland says that his rugby-plus-Economics schedule is “manageable. Once you get on top of things, you’ve just got to stay on top.” When Wang arrived, he joined King’s Voices, then tried out rowing, then football – along with the comedy, the drama... and the engineering. “By the end of the first term, I thought I had to leave. I was breaking down. Then Rob, a fellow engineer, said to me: ‘Why don’t you just quit some of this stuff?’ It was a revelation. And after that, I was fine.” As an overachieving student, Wang says, he thought he had to do everything. “But if I had to give any advice to the person I was, I’d say: ‘Calm down. It’ll be all right. And maybe have a couple of people over. At least once. Just so you can say you did.’”