The Comedian's Comedian Podcast - Adam Riches

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

Adam Riches is known for his shows that teeter perfectly between crafted brilliance and sheer chaos with his fearless, high-energy characters performances - from Sean Bean, Coach Coach to Michael Ball. This is an incredibly rare look behind the mask and one you don't want to miss!We discuss why Edinburgh shouldn't be seen as the Olympics, Eddie Izzard's documentary that inspired him to rip up the rulebook, how audience participation became his superpower, the challenges of the industry, how Sean Bean's Dungeons 'n Bastards reignited a creative spark and is Adam Riches 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 learning to shift gears for stand-up audiences with character comedy, the choice to seek out an audience, a wild late night Edinburgh spot and the timing structure he created which allowed his act to remain freeform.Follow the Pod: Instagram, YouTube & TikTok, and also you can also sign up to the Mailing List!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 Adam✅ Early access to new episodes (where possible!)✅ Exclusive membership offerings including a monthly “Stu&A”PLUS you’ll get access to the full back catalogue of extras you can find nowhere else!Catch Up with Adam:Adam Riches: The 12 Beans of Christmas is on tour this December across the UK and also stars in Jimmy, which returns to the Park theatre in London from the 19th to 24th January 2026. For more info, please visit linktre.ee/adamrichescomedy.Everything I'm up to:See me live (when there's dates!)… Find out all the info at stuartgoldsmith.com/comedy.Discover my comedy about the climate crisis, for everyone from activists to CEOs, at stuartgoldsmith.com/climate.See Stuart live on tour - www.stuartgoldsmith.com/comedy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stu here. Episode 500 is somehow fast approaching. It's already in the cat. I can't wait for you to hear it. I need your feedback. I want to gather some data on your favourite episodes, your best moments, see if there's any fun anecdotes I can uncover along the way. Something must have happened in your life in nearly 500 episodes of podcasting. And as a thanks for taking part, myself and producer Callum, will be gifting an Insider's Insider 12-month membership on Patreon to one lucky respondent. You can pay this forward if you're already one. The survey's super short, all the questions are skippable, and this would mean a lot if you could just take five minutes out of your day to go and fill the thing in. Head to Stuartgoldsmith.com slash survey, or the link is in the show notes. There's going to be a very short break in September before we approach that milestone, but lots of exciting stuff in the works.

I'm very pleased today to be bringing you an amazing interview with Adam Riches. I say an amazing interview. It's amazing because he's amazing. I'm not bigging myself up here. My skills remain as ever humble. I'm just thrilled to have Adam on the show. He's a brilliant, brilliant comic, an amazing actor, a really innovative and fierce and unafraid sort of engageer of audiences.

And it does the spectacular crowdwork. as you will hear. He is a pretty private person and he's very unusual for him to do a podcast. So I'm really grateful for him for kind of taking a chance on me. He says in the early part of this recording that he kind of listened to a few episodes of the show and kind of came up with some reasons that he might want to do it. So I'm very grateful for him and his bravery in kind of stepping out of his comfort zone. And also he's got an incredible show coming out, which I will tell more about in the middle bit, which is transferring to London, as well as you might know him as Sean Bean from Dungeons and Bastards, which is one of my favourite things I've ever seen.

You might have seen Coach Coach, which we will hear about. It just sounds incredible. I can't believe I missed that one. And with John Kearns, he was Michael Ball in Bowen Ball, which was another sort of unalloyed delight, really, that I will probably remember forever. In the first half of this episode, we're going to discuss why Edinburgh should be seen not just as a three-year project, not a five, but a seven-year project, and not the Olympics. We're going to know about his early career chaos. We'll find out about that, where he was known for taking revenge on the audience, and find out how Eddie Isard's documentary Believe inspired him to rip up the rulebook.

If you would like to watch this, you can join the Insiders Club on Patreon for a mere £3 a month to get access to the full video and audio, and to recognise what my speaking head looks like. the speaking head there's horrible images there you can find out what this looks like because the way in which I very occasionally once a month get recognised that often happens

alongside someone saying oh sorry this is a bit weird I've never seen you before and so you can get involved in that as well as getting 20 minutes of exclusive extra content with Adam find out more about that at patreon.com slash comcom pod

and here at last is Adam Riches I don't know if we've ever met I'm not sure either no I think we might have brushed shoulders or we might have given that kind of nod that you give to people that you do know but you've never met and you just kind of like go hey hey mate

or a respectful acknowledging nod yes which I've tried to do in real life with everybody it it feels like a sort of it feels like a mad oversight on my part I've been going to Edinburgh for 30 years. You must have been going for as long, or nearly as long.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're sort of similar-ish ages. And it just, it seems bananas to me that our circles have never, we've kind of never interacted because I've been seeing your shows for ages. And you're very much, I think of you as a sort of Edinburgh fixture. Like I'm always excited to see what you're up to. So I suppose what I'm starting with is, hello Adam. That's our building up to it.

Yeah. I think that's probably more down to me. me than you because I'm very much naturally but also especially in Edinburgh I'm very much just do the show and go home and I don't drink and I don't go out and I don't socialise and

since oh I mean I'm maybe 10, 11 years maybe I don't gig so I've I somewhat remove myself from any situation other than me actually bringing you on stage and talking

to you on stage you only do the most intense possible version of social interaction. Yes, yes. So that's probably down to me and you're not alone. Like there's lots of people, there's lots of comedians, you know, and lots of people that do the stuff that we do

that I've just never met. And I've always enjoyed and I've always, you know, they've known friends of mine, but I've never entered into that Venn diagram. I'm very, I don't think I am a Venn diagram actually. I think I'm just a circle. A point. Yeah.

Do, do, is that because you are sort of, I can imagine at Edinburgh, particularly with some of the really physical stuff that you do. And lots of comics, I like that. I like that, I think, that they kind of, they opt out of stuff on purpose. They're like, and certainly after you've been doing it for a while, you're like, what I'm going to do is see one or two valued friends on a one-to-one basis during the day and not party. And that, you know, I think a lot of people sort of head in that direction.

But also, I wonder if I get the sense that that's like, I mean, my first assumption would be, that comedians are awful. Comedians are like all, like we can be awful and if you're not into kind of standing, Katie Wicks described it as kind of everyone's standing in a circle

trying to top each other's story and that can be the best thing in the world if you get to, you know, one of the reasons to go to Edinburgh is to be in that thing or I can imagine it would be enormously alienating and disappointing in all sorts of ways.

Yeah, yeah, a lot of that. A lot of what you said there is sort of right. I mean, I'm not, I'm not a great socialised it anyway, I don't, I, I prefer one-to-ones, you know, than groups. I don't, you know, I don't, like I said, I don't drink, so I don't go to bars and I don't go to, you know, I don't hang out late at night. So that's one side of it, which is just me as a person, is that I'm not naturally kind of able or confident to kind of be in those situations.

Another is, you know, we alluded to at the beginning, is just the focus and the exhaustion of the festival itself and the shows, certainly the earlier shows that I used to do, they really did take it out of me, you know, and I really did try and make every single show and every single performance, the performance for the people that were there. And, you know, and just give everything to that moment. Certainly when I was starting out, that was the case, because you're trying to build a reputation. You're trying to generate word of mouth. And in the absence of an agent or a promoter or a producer or anyone that was on my side, the show was the show was my career like if if at that festival if if the people that went in I had to send them out you know giggling bubbling you know jumping and and talking and there were lots of things about the venues that I would pick the seller is is probably the most perfect venue the pleasant seller to start off in because of where it's positioned in the courtyard you have a queue if you're lucky enough to have a queue so you have visibility of people sat on the benches going, well, what's that show? That looks popular.

Sure, yeah. You then have people filing out into the courtyard, hopefully, talking about it. And I would, you know, I'd always shape the show so that the last sketch or the last character would be a talking point, would be like, oh, they're not going to forget this bit. So that then they would be, you know, even if they went out going, what the hell was that? Or Jesus Christ. Good. That's good stuff. So, but going back to the thing, like, the exhaustion of the shows would, would mean that I would just, it cost so much money, it took up so much focus for the year, it was the thing that was going to lead to everything, I couldn't jeopardize that

by not trying to look after myself in some capacity. So, you know, I'd go, I'd just swim, I'd go to the cinema, I'd very rarely go and see any shows as well. I would just, I would just keep myself in my own kind of pocket. And then the third thing I think is very apt that Katie said, that like yeah it's also the energy around Edinburgh and again going back to those early years in particular there's a great strength that you can get from the camaraderie of everybody having a shared suffering and and I think that that is part of your Edinburgh uniform that's part of your Edinburgh Duke of Edinburgh course you have to pass that get that badge shared suffering and you know and realizing that it's not just you that it's everybody that's facing you know

the difficulties that can be very very helpful and that can be very soothing when you're up there on your own and maybe things aren't going the way that they're going and and it can help you get a little bit more um i don't know sort of um togetherness togetherness with with people that it's it is hard what we're trying to do and and it is going to be difficult and it is a long journey and so it's good to have companions with you on that journey but also it it's a double-edged sword because how people manage those feelings and how people express those feelings, well, then you're dealing with something that's not shared and I will behave differently to a show that's not going well and is, you know, bankrupting me for a month than maybe someone else. And that idea of being in their pain and in their suffering and in their kind of difficulties, well, that can be tiring, that can be exhausting in of itself. And I found that like, like I say, there's lots of people that deal with that very, very differently.

Some of those ways you can identify with and form a bond with and a friendship with that can last years. You know, a lot of the people that I started out with, I'm friends for years. But also it can tell you something about the type of person that's up there that you maybe won't be friends with for years and you maybe don't want to be around with. And actually, there's also a difficulty if your show is started to pick up or your show is doing well. and then you almost downplay it sometimes and that's that's not right like you know you if you if you if I have to be up in Edinburgh and squeeze the spot when it's going bad well I also want to go up there and show my sunt tan my skin's looking good no I want to I want to be able to have that moment as well I think that's very important psychologically to know how to enjoy success and know to how to enjoy you know

the the reward that you've reaped so yes very very long segmented answer but but but but certainly like all of those things combined mean that it's far easier for me to just turn up 15 half an hour before the show and stick around and stick around maybe to talk to a couple of the performers that might be in the show or whatever but then go home and then just you know probably work on the show again probably just mile on what I've just done I'm just going to hover on the on the I think it's a really compassionate response I particularly in terms of like um in terms of the other people that you're with and your compassion for them and the fact that comedians who are in states of, as you say, on a financial precipice perhaps, who are either doing really well

and processing that by glorying in it or doing less well and processing that by having a sort of panicky nervous, you know, kind of, well, all of that like a panicky comedian. Can you think of anything worse? You know what I mean? There's like almost. To be able to have a warm and positive experience with comedians regardless of how they're having. That's like quite a hard one skill from with whom you'd need to have those conversations with hard one allies. I think the idea of my brother, I'll never forget my brother a few years ago, went to Edinburgh and was like, oh, I get it. This is like a trying things festival. And that's really stated me.

I think that's very positive. But also, this is a shared suffering festival in so many ways. It really is. And it's changed. It's changed a lot. like over the years and you know a festival that i might describe when we're talking now um it's it's a totally different festival to the festival that you and i might perform in now it's totally different and there's probably you know moments where we'll we'll talk more about how that

changed because you and i've both been doing it for for a similar amount of time like and it's just clear it's just totally clear how it's evolved and it has to evolve and i like that they evolve you know i'm open to that um but the the notion of it the other element of it being competitive well that's never sat well with me and i'm i'm not a competitive person i'm i'm very competitive with myself i'm very much um i've always just you know there's there's there's a um a nintendo game mario cart where you could do laps if you played on your own and the next lap you could do would be against the shadow ghost of the track you know that that's me like i would i'm much i would much rather in have a game where i play a

against what I did before and try and improve on that, then I would play with like four friends and try and beat them. I'd always try and be the stupidest in that. And I'd always try and wreck it or I'd always try and drive back. You know, that's more my way. If I'm in a group, I want to get away from that idea of one of us having to win. And Edinburgh, unfortunately, has a backbone of competition to it. And that's never, never sat well with me.

And so that can also activate people in different ways and affect people in different ways. And, you know, you've spoken to many, many people and you've done many, many festivals. We know how that month can unfold for people when they've got one eye on what might be happening to them in the background and on the back rows of their shows. And I think that that has been a great distraction and a great unfortunate distraction to a lot of people in terms of actually just like your brother said. Trying stuff. Just try. Just do it. Like, when I first started out, like, I was very much told that, like, the festival is a seven-year project. It'll take you seven years before you can conquer Edinburgh. And the person that told me was, ended up being my agent for a period.

And she was very, very savvy on it, very, very kind of, like, connected to a lot of the great acts that are now, you know, superstars now. and it was very much a case of like you you go into this festival knowing that it's not going to happen this year it's not going to happen next year that's not that's not the point the point is that you find the thing that's then going to become your thing you're looking for your voice and when you find your voice you need to hone your voice and alongside that is running an audience and when the two meet when your voice meets your audience well then things will probably start to look a little rosier for you and so and that's i probably did it in

five, although if you want to take it in actual years, I probably did it in nine, you know, eight or nine in terms of like my very first, maybe 15 in terms of my very first going up there. But so, but, but that, that was always in my mind. I'm not here to win anything. I'm not here to get anything. I'm here to get good. And I'm here to, I'm here to express myself and, and understand what that means theatrically, comedically, in an acting sense, in a, in a writing sense. And, and use the festival for what I think it is still. a veritable gold mine for which is you're never going to get anywhere else to home you're never going to find anywhere else on the planet that's going to give you that like the same room at the same time in the same city that's walkable that you don't have to travel to and that you and that you have the world's press there and the world's industry and heroes from bygone dear like what what an incredible resource to like just get good but that that was my festival That was my era.

And everybody else's festivals are very, very different. And I think the festival itself is different now because I think the competition and the industry has now overtaken and taken control of it rather than like it was actually something that would harvest it. Yes, yes. Yeah, I think that absolutely, but loads of what you said there resonates with me.

I'm fascinated by the idea of a seven-year project. I think that's something I wish I'd heard years and years ago. I wish I'd heard that because I think, and it's partly my personality, I'm very much like, more, more, everything now, you know. And that is not really a thing that happens, you know, maybe one person a year gets everything now. And even then you look and you go, oh, that was building up to this kind of for 10 years.

Seeing Edinburgh as a seven-year project, I want to think about that. And I want to think about that idea of your voice meeting your audience. Because if you do see it as a seven-year, that's brilliant advice. Because if you see it as a seven-year project, I mean, it's different financially now. It's even more expensive, more ruinous. the idea of thinking what, you know, not necessarily that you'd make the same losses on year seven, one would hope as you'd make on year one, two or three. But I think, I think it's almost like that kind of the karate advice to kind of like aim to punch through the back of the head,

do you know what I mean? Yeah. This is, or I'll never forget my friend Pete telling me I was dithering about buying a van and he said, look, you want to buy a van one day. So why don't you stop trying to buy the perfect van and just buy your first van? I was like, oh, that's good. It's just a good mindset way of thinking about it seven seven years i think is is really interesting and i think i feel like i hazily have read somewhere that you um came to edinburgh or came to performing comedy in quite an unusual sort of a way and as you as you said you don't you don't really gig and i believe you don't preview either is that right um yeah latrally yeah yeah i think i i i mean I

I sweated a lot about thinking about coming on this and doing the podcast and part of it is what we've spoken about before yeah I don't I don't enjoy talking about myself publicly

I don't mind talking about a show I don't mind talking about a show that I've worked on or I'm working on or that kind of thing but when you start to scratch beneath the surface and get to the process well then you start to scratch even deeper

and you talk to the person and I think I was very much the entertainment world that I kind of grew up in there were less channels there was less platforms so therefore there was less known about the people that you loved and they embraced that and they and I remember reading things like Harrison Ford would say things like you know like if they know it the less they know about me the more they're prepared to go with me on the screen and that kind of stuff you know and I would say if there was one person's career that you could probably say I followed quite, quite mirrored, is Harrison Ford's career.

Like, that's pretty much how I see. I think I'm seen as the UK comedy scenes Harrison Ford. I definitely want to help you put that about. But I liked that. And I think when I then, you know, when you're just starting out and you're pretending to be somebody else on route to finding out who you actually are, then I think I put in behaviours that I'd read or that I'd seen. you know my heroes do and one of those was well don't talk too much don't don't be so

public like be a little bit more and that knitted perfectly with my own sense of you know sense of self so but but the sweater about coming on here was then just that idea of like identifying yourself as a comedian because that comedy was never something that I wanted to do comedy was something that I never looked to do and and it's probably been at the root of maybe a lot of the good choices that I've made in my career, but also a lot of the probably, I wouldn't say bad choices because none of them are bad, but certainly the ones that are more complicated

and have led to complicated conversations with people that work in the industry, people that work with you, or people that are trying to work alongside you, that kind of stuff. I'd always seen myself as, I always wanted to be an actor, and I genuinely, I say this as a joke, but I genuinely started writing plays, that did have a comedy flavour to them but were meant to be dramatic

but people laughed and there is something about being on stage when you're trying to act and people are laughing at you and you style it out because you go, yeah, of course that was meant to be funny when actually you thought you'd written a Pinter play

which who is very funny who is very funny great example Pinter actually interesting example I know what I want to feel on stage so you know like we've all had it like I am endlessly disappointed

by what I write and produce, endlessly disappointed, because it looks and feels and sounds nothing like how it is in my head. And that's across the board. We're all trying to recreate the idea that we had because the idea is pure and perfect and is holy. The reality is what it looks like on the page. And how far you're going to go in your career is the difference between is how how you feel about the difference between the reality and the idea like are you going to be

are you going to lose faith and are you going to continually just stay writing and not venture forth in front of an audience and not venture forth even giving that piece of writing to someone else to read because of the difference and the fear that the reality isn't the same

as your idea or are you going to admit that putting it on the page is the first step to finding it and you can have multiple goes at trying to make it look more like the idea in your head. So that's always kind of what's in my head about what I'm writing is that I'm trying to recreate the thing that got me excited about it in the first place, which is in my head. And the journey on stage is me trying to get as close to that as possible. And so it's the feeling of the idea. It's not necessarily how I want to feel as, you know, I don't want to be clapped.

I don't want to be laughed at. I don't want to be adored. I don't, you know, all that stuff. And Certainly it's not the other anti-comedy way, which is I don't want to, I don't want to make things tense for people. I don't want to make things awkward for people. It's not that at all. It's the feeling of what gets me really excited. I have lots of ideas. And I have lots of ideas. And I have limited time to realize them and limited opportunities to realize them. So the ones that come out, are the ones that are the strongest in my in my head at a certain period of time for whatever reason and so that feeling is so strong that it's put itself to the front of my head then now I'm on a quest to try and realize that as best I can so when I can do that on the page and then I can hand that over to the performer side of me and he can go yeah okay I can see what you're doing here I can make this a little bit better here I can I can take it from here I can give you another draft of what that will feel like on a stage and then you watch me do

that. Conversations with yourself. Yeah, I love it. And then you see what would, you saw, you saw that I could have done with something a bit more armory then, a bit more artillery then would have helped. Or I can, you know, you write me something for that bit. Yeah, right. Yeah, I can do that. And so you're just in this constant conversation. That's, that's the quest. That's, that's, that's the thing for me is, it's not the feeling for me. It's the feeling of the idea that inspired me. That's, that's what I'm looking for all the time on stage. And it's, it's difficult.

Yeah, of course it's difficult. Like that, I gloss over that idea, very glibly, like the idea of just taking something that you've done and showing it to people, whether that be a story you've written or a painting that you've done or then taking a piece of performance onto a stage and praying in front of it. Like, that's a gigantic step. But it's not the biggest step.

The biggest step is finishing it. And I mean finishing it to take it to someone. Like that van metaphor again is the great thing. So many times you'll be writing something or so many times you'll be thinking about something and you won't know the ending's not working or the middle's not working or you haven't got a way to begin it

and you can just tear yourself up in knots about that. The most important thing I've found is just if you can't think of a way to end something and you've got three quarters of a piece that's just this stunning sketch or this stunning piece of stand-up or stunning routine, let's say, to keep it in stand-up. Just say, you know, the equivalent of, and then they all went home happily ever after. Just end it.

Just finish it. Just tie the knot and do it. And then get out there and do it. Because the answer won't reveal itself by looking at that page and endlessly just going, what could it be, what could it be, what could it be? You need to give yourself a different way of looking at something if you've hit a hurdle. And that different way in our context is, is taking it out onto a stage and giving it a literal different dimension.

It's three-dimensional then. And it's in the air and you've felt it and you've said it. That 10 times out of 10, that's going to tell you where to go next with your next draft. That is 10 times out of 10 going to unlock that punchline. It's going to reveal itself and everything like that. The stage is the most vital part of this process. You shouldn't go on there without the page, obviously. you know, you've got to give yourself enough weaponry,

but the stage is the finishing point for all of this. And that's what I meant about the audience. Like with a tongue in my cheek, I say they're the least important things. They're the last draft. You know, they come in at the end for me. And they will probably point me to a better thing that I could probably come up with. And again, that probably leads into the audience participation as well. like there are there are moments and lines and interactions and ad libs that I've come up with

in the moment with an audience member that I could never have written ever and they they exceed and and if I'm probably honest why I kept going with the audience participation is those moments where where I would feel that happening that that magic happening in the moment just as it as it you know without me even knowing where it came from it's just out of my mouth and it's happened well that's That's, that's the idea. That's the feeling. I've done it. Like, that level's completed.

And it's probably why I moved on from character shows is because it was like, yeah, I've completed that level. I've done it. And so I know what that feeling is like. And I know, and I've, I now look to create, look to think of different feelings to do with where I am in life, things that I've done before, things that I might be interested in and try and recreate those feelings again on stage. And that's, that's the next kind of quest. you were known particularly for kind of like we were laughing anyone about like revenge on the audience kind of stuff you were known for I mean some of

I think my my memory of the first time I saw you was when you were being or like the most vivid memory is when you got two people in the crowd to throw you into the audience this was in the Pleasets upstairs I don't know what year or a show that was it was a kind of a sketch or like a character show was that the year you won the award it was yeah that was Daniel de Lewis who was telling to the audience how you test an

actor's range and that's by picking you up and see how far you can throw him of course and that was I think that was the other bit I remember was at the same show was me and my wife used to laugh about like Starlings do was that the mastermind yeah feeding each other from your mouth so that show that show was really yeah I mean like in the you know there's always a story behind a show and I can't get away from that being a show for me like obviously it's the show that won the comedy award. But I was doing that stuff like, like you say, for years. I was doing, you know, and it was interesting because when, when I remember when I did that

and everything happened from that show and I was like, you know, I don't know why that's so special. Like, I mean, some of the other shows I've been doing have been like way better, I think. Like there was a lot. This is a great acceptance speech, by the way. Oh, my God, yeah. I don't know why you wanted this one. Yeah, we maybe don't have to get on to how I felt about that. that's well maybe we do i don't know but um but but i did i did a thing maybe like

2013 or something i can't remember what year it was but i decided to i thought it'd be quite fun to revisit some old shows so i booked some gigs at king's place and i did i did like a show from 2009 10 8 9 10 and 11 so i did four shows the ones i did it in a run is that right yeah 8 9 10 11 yeah yeah and when i did them all back to back i was like oh no that shows like years ahead of all of the others of course it's of course it's it's the most complete it's the most it's a show that like it's just it's clearly the product of all of those ones that's so annoying isn't it the critics and judges were right that was the best one how infuriating and it's that thing it's that voice it's the voice in the audience met and and but that

show is interesting because again yeah i'd done i'd done one preview yeah i wasn't going to Edinburgh that year and Colin Holt, Nick Mohammed and I, I think Colin was going that year, 2011, but Nick and I weren't. And so, but we, you know, we were at that point, we were in that process of, but all we do is just write and generate live material and put it on. Like we just write, perform, right, perform. So we, we had this evening at, um, the small room at Leicester's Square theatre. I don't know if they still do that. The one with the two pillars that make it impossible for anybody to see you. And we did a show called Triceratops, which is just where we would do, the three of us would do... I saw Triceratops, yes. I was just thinking about you. I very

much keep you in mind of, like, of a Nick Mohamed, Colin Holt type of like individual person generating volumes of material, often, certainly in the case of you and Colin with a sort of dark twist to it, Colin had that kind of Alan Moore influence. Yes, I saw Triceratops. That's ridiculous. We did that. And the idea, the idea was, is that obviously we'd have a plastic to just present stuff but for me very very much so and this probably goes back to my theatre stuff i was i really wanted the gang show idea um just as a little sidebar like one of the one of the one of the what helped me make a decision about coming on this was uh listening to four or five people's episodes on it okay and um i listened to stevie obviously i listened to uh john

Kearns, I listen to Ben Tajay, Toby Haydoke, the three of that, the four of them, sorry, I've known for years, obviously, one, I'm married to, I'll let the audience work out which is which, one I'm married two, two, two I've worked with, three I've worked with extensively, Toby I worked with years ago, Ben, in the lots of distance, and then John obviously very, very recently. And what helped me was that I'm at the worst stage of the writing cycle now, the bit that I hate the most, which is the first draft stage. And I'm, I've got three ideas that I'm, that I'm working on. Like, I just can't be bothered with it. I've come off the back of two very, very successful shows. And so I've got that sense of like, why do I have to do something

else? Like, I've just done that. Why do I have to make it happen again? And so I hate it. And it's the worst thing. And listening to those four talk, um, and talk about the different things. I was like, it helped me. It helped me get back on the page. And I started writing all of them. And I was like, well, you know what, like, if, if I can contribute something like that to help someone get over something or get through something or provide a distraction or an inspiration, then fucking hell great. Like, what's, that's, what's the point of it, if not that? But the fifth person I listened to was someone who I don't know, who I have seen. And that was, uh, Zach, who does Stamptown. Yeah.

Like, the gang show thing was, was it for me. Like Saturday Night Live was like the thing for me. Growing up and, you know, and kind of what I aspired to do and to be. So the idea that like Nick and Colin and I could create an environment whereby not only would be able to do our own stuff, but we could write for each other and do stuff together, I thought that was the strongest suit of the evening. As it turned out, Colin was doing his own show. so he was only interested in preparing the material and writing the material that he was going to be doing for the month

Nick wasn't getting a show together but was just exploring stuff and just doing stuff and everything I was the one that wrote stuff for us to do and and you know like it was one of the sketches I wrote I was flying back from New Zealand from a job that I'd just done and the show was that night and I was like I'm not going to cancel it because it's important

And Nick and Colin were like, let's just just pull it. Like you're going to be exhausted like, or we'll get someone else in. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, it's fine. You're not even going to Edinburgh. Don't worry. The bit I wrote at altitude,

completely delirious, was the mastermind bit. And when I gave it to Nick, I gave it to Nick and I said, I've got this, for the list of the mastermind, if you know the mastermind board game, where it's got a picture on the front of like this genius sat with his concubine behind him and they look very sophisticated

and they look like they're there to take you on at this most basic of board games that was just a color now let us move some pegs around yes exactly yeah I found that funny and that was the notion of the characters I was going to play the evil genius

and Nick was going to play my concubine and I showed Nick the draft and it had all the stuff about that like Starlings do was where he could only be fed by his concubine taking a drink and regurgitating it into his mouth and dripping it in like starlings do that was how he'd get fed and then of course that would lead to the audience having to do it for me when i gave that to nick to look at for the first time he was like and this bit with the the the dribbling and stuff like we're not doing that are we

and i was like yeah so like that's that's the funny bit that's the best bit of it and he was like Okay, so like, I'm not going to be able to do that without laughing. Like, I'm not going to be able to take a drink and, like, drip it into your mouth without laughing. It's going to go everywhere. And I was like, I'm not going to be able to receive it without laughing. So I'm at more risk medically from the choking of it. And of course we did it. And of course, it was a wonderful, wonderful moment.

And it was, again, it was that feeling. It was that sense of the gang show, like Nick and I are doing a first draft idea that's so out. there that neither of us would have been able to do without each other. Yes. And we both committed to doing it. We both did it. Nick was like, yeah, I'll do it. And so, unfortunately, like, his character is silent.

And, you know, it was very, very easy to rehearse because it was just like, my character tells you what to do. But by the way, I'm blind. So you need to put me in position. You need to hand me things. And I will deliberately not find them when you're trying to. I would deliberately go the wrong way. It was whatever you can do, whatever basic thing you could do to get a laugh out of

And of course it was a wonderful, wonderful moment And it was from that That I had one other bit Which was a swing ball bit Where literally I just bought two swing ball things And I just played them And I thought Wouldn't it be funny to just have them going

Above the audience's head As I then am just talking The tension Because their eyes would just be looking At the swing ball all the time Like what a great distraction to have As I'm trying to get them to listen to me As a character

And these things are just going Those two things from that one night um both of them written at altitude where they were they were the things were and that was like late april early may and i and i was like okay yeah i think i could probably get an hour together i think i could probably do 25 minutes of that mastermind guy and 45 minutes of the swing ball thing and uh and so i just did i did one preview at the invisible dot um of that and um and that went very very well um and and then but it had a completely different framework and and it had a framework of um me as an old performer arriving in the venue and looking round and thinking like oh this is the scene

of when i saw that great show back in 2011 when you remember when the guy he got the swing balls out and he did this and then these and then this guy here in a red jumper i think it was and i talked to a member of viewers sure yeah yeah yeah he picked someone up and threw him as far as he could find him and And then this guy, well, this guy did something with some liquid into his mouth that it bears nothing. You know, and it would be that. And then we would go back into that thing. And I did that as the first, I was on the train up to Edinburgh. And I just met Mick Perrin, who'd booked me for a gig in St. Albans.

And I did well at the gig. And he introduced me to Eddie Isid. And then, and I didn't really, I didn't really watch Eddie as a starboard. I obviously knew who it was. But, I got talking to them just a little bit. And then Mick said, you know, it's a great, you know, Eddie's got a great story about Edinburgh. You know, you're going up this shit, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I had the Eddie Isid, I think it's believe is the documentary about his, is like the film documentary, I think.

And I was on the train up and I had this script in front of me. And I was just like, oh, this is not. this is not kind of sounding right and I'd done a one good preview and it was good but I'm not foolish enough to believe that and the last year's show was real skin of the teeth like I'd gone up there in a real mess

loads of ambition and I'd really pulled it together on the stage over the first three previews and I was in danger of thinking that that was a good way to work that that was the way to work was that you just go up there with a mess and then you pull the drawstrings

tight in the first three previews but that went totally against me not having any kind of like promoter or publicity or anything like that where I knew that those first three shows were key to getting word of mouth started for an unknown act and so I was like

I want to have something formed I want to be a bit more like you were saying I want to take a step more and I need to make this I can do this and I and the last few Edinburghs have shown that it's growing and people are really enjoying it I need to be treating this a bit more seriously

in terms of like being more prepared and more structured with it because that that will make me feel better about it and imagine what the show could be if it was structured when it got there and then I could improve it along like well you know it where it could go and I put this I put the I put the film on and I saw I saw the documentary and again like I say like I didn't know Eddie's work and I sorry I hadn't seen Eddie's work but I was so I was so taken by this idea of this guy that started on a certain pathway doing something and then totally ripping up his rulebook and doing something else and thinking, yeah, that is, that's, that's, that's the point of the festival is like, I should, I'm not, I'm not a finished article. Why am I worried about presenting myself as a finished article? This is the Edinburgh fringe. This isn't the plodium. Like, this is, this is the fringe.

This is a place of exploration and ideas. And so that really sat with me and I went home and then we did the tech and I did the run through with this old man, bookend thing. And I was like, oh, it doesn't have to take ages before I get to the funny. Like, it's wistful and it's clever and it's nice. But it doesn't half take ages. And what's the first? And so I looked at the script and I had the first preview then. And I was like, what's the first joke here that it's like, bam?

What starts this show with a bam? And it's this agent character that I did where I just arrive on stage skidding. And I try and sign everyone in the room, throwing business cards everywhere. And it's a quick two minute like room breaker. you know, get the audience, grab them, shake them up, leave them to listen, and then nice loud music, and then into the next sketch, which is the swing ball thing. And I was like, oh, okay. And I had a Victor sketch where I had a shower scene at the end, the end of the show.

So Mastermind wasn't even the end of the show. Like the bit was someone spitting in my mouth on the end of the show. I did this, I then got naked and got in a shower with an audience member. And I was like, this show, man, it's just ridiculous. And then we go to a bookend. So I cut everything. And I cut everything. I did the first preview with the bookends

It went well and I went home And I was like, it's good, but it's not great And I just went, this is where we're cutting it This is where we're starting it This is what it's going to be And literally from from show to The roof came off it And I was like, oh wow, okay, I've got something here

And then I did my usual work Okay, where can I tidy it up? Where can I do this? I was working with Lee from late night gimfight And Ben Wilson from idiots as at advance as my kind of stooges in it. And they were just, you know, just looking at it. Every day I turn up and go, on this, you're doing this, you're doing this, you're doing this, you're doing this, you're doing this, and they'd be like, okay. And then I would just do the show at them. They were very much part of the audience for the first seven shows, because they

were like, what's the bit that we do next? And he's going to tell us, and he's going to move us and physically move us. And then it became what it became. You know, the audience has really responded to it quickly. Critics were in really, really quickly. Critics responded to it really quickly and for the month then it was more of a case of could I sustain this for a month because it was such a high energy show but it was it was one of those things again where you just go like if you can if if there is something I always say like if I can't learn lines when I'm when I'm when I'm doing a audition this and I and I don't mean like I can't learn on on on you know after like two reads of it like if you've been trying to learn lines or

if you've been trying to do a bit for like for ages um And two hours, and it's not sticking. It's the writing. You are not finding the voice of what is on the page. You're trying to put your voice on top of it. And I think that there was a danger for me after I'd done such a chaotic but successful show in 2010 to just be the chaotic lunatic.

And people didn't see just how much writing and design went into every single element of what they thought was just happening or was just audience participation. And I could see that, you know, there were lots of shows that did audience participation, certainly after I'd won that award, where I could just see like, you know, you haven't thought why you're doing this. You shouldn't bring an audience member up on stage. It's got to have a truth to it.

It's got to have the character's got to have a reason. The sketch has got to have a reason for why you would look to totally destroy it by bringing a random element up. Like, surely the same thing is to just keep writing and keep control. And I just thought like that that was that was a real lesson to me that show Of like always follow your instincts If if something's not right and something's not working Even if you're still getting laughs from it if it doesn't feel right

If it doesn't feel true then look at it again and change it be brave enough to change it Because particularly in Edinburgh and this I think is an aspect that's lost in Edinburgh Like you can you can change it tomorrow you do something different tomorrow Who cares? I know that's very easy for me to say and I know that that's very that's very against how the industry and the festival is now because actually... Yes, people want it to be the Olympics, don't they? Bring your best stuff, you get one shot, shoot your shot.

Whereas you and I, I think, started it from a perspective like, oh, this is a wonderful creative workshop. Terrible advice that this has got to mean, this has got to be everything. This is the show that matters. terrible. That is the worst place you could ever put a creative in. Tell them that this one has to matter. Like, I'm, you can put sports analogies to this as much as you want, but we're not sports. We're not, we're not athletes. We're artists. We're creatives. Like, we are delicate creatures, however bombastic we may appear. Like, there has to be a design on it. There has

to be a thought behind it and an instinct behind it. And going back to, like, listening to, um, to the Stantown guys, like hearing them do that. And then, you know, sort of realizing that in a one person capacity on stage, like that kind of feeling. Like, that was, that was a great feeling because, you know, regardless of the fact that it wins a ward or not, again, it was like, no, this is, I can trust my brain. My brain told me there was something not right about this very nicely written, very, very cleverly intricate thing. And that was probably where I left theatre behind to probably take a step into comedy with that show, even though clearly I'd been doing that for years.

before but that was a very much a divorce of like theater's going to help you and theater's going to give you something but you are now in the comedy environment and that has to be recognized by its own merits and laws and rules and disciplines and you know all of that kind of stuff so lean into that like don't resist that and it probably led to like two or three of my best shows I think because of because of that because of that release and embrace So this is Adam. Adam Riches the 12 Beans of Christmas, in which he is being the Dungeons and Bastards version of Sean Bean. It's going to be on tour this December. It's coming to Edinburgh, Bristol, Margate, Glasgow, Manchester, Leic, London, Brighton, Leeds and Cambridge. And he is also starring in Jimmy, which is his amazing sort of theatre show, monologue in which he plays tennis constantly. And it's about the rise and fall and rise again of Jimmy Connors. That is directed by Tom Parry of Pappy's fame, who also recently got mentioned on the Josie Long Returns episode, which I recorded yesterday. And that returns to the Park Theatre in London from the 19th to the 24th of

January next year, 26. I haven't seen that yet, and I'm definitely going to go. So see you there. And for more info, you can visit linktree.e. That's how it works. Oh, is it? Yeah, it's linktre.com. Slash, Adam Rich's Comedy. And you can follow him on Instagram at Adam Riches Comedy. But I think you'll know from this episode that he doesn't really want you to do that, but you should anyway. You can find out how to see me live at Stuartgoldsmith.com slash comedy. It suddenly occurred to me there that given that I'm doing this to video for the first time, I should sort of gesture at the bottom of the screen as a trick to make evil producer Callum have to put something online, but I'm not going to do that. But go to

Stuartgoldsmith.com slash comedy and you can sign up to the Comcom pod mailing list, if you wish. Yes, we now have one of them that I'm going to stick to. That's at Stuartgollsmith.com slash podcast. In the second half, we'll talk about how audience participation became Adam's superpower. We'll talk about the creative contract that he made with himself. We'll find out more about Dungeons and bastards and more about why Jimmy Conners became, or Jimmy, the show about Jimmy Connors, became the show of which he is most proud. And we'll find out whether the bastards's happy. All of that coming up right now as we return to this episode with Adam Riches. There was one other thing I wanted to ask about audience participation before we get to Sean,

which is that I think you were sort of quite well known at the time for being right up at the limit of what you could ask an audience member to do. And if I look back at kind of reviews at the time, most reviews would say things along the lines of, this is really funny, but thank God he didn't pick on me. There was quite a lot of that. Do you, like, what, do you have any theories as to why that was? Was, were you going for, like, to get the roof off type laughter, you took as, you took more extreme risks or you asked more of people?

And I'm sort of interested in, in the relationship between what you asked of people in the audience and your own kind of, maybe slightly more reserved, I mean, you haven't said shy. I don't want to put words in your mouth, perhaps it's shyness, you know. like for someone who is quite a sort of private person, you were asking people in the audience and sort of, you know, asking quite hard, shall we say, maybe not demanding, but really getting people to do ludicrous things.

And I'm just interested in the relationship between those things, whether you were kind of, was it that you're let loose because on stage you didn't feel shy or was it that you didn't have, provocatively, that you didn't have the same respect for maybe their reservedness as you did for your own? What are your feelings about that? I would never go and see one of my shows back then.

I would never have gone to see it. The thought of that happening in a room would be my absolute worst night out that you could ever possibly think of. That's one statement to say on it. Like, I would never go and see me, which probably psychologically speaks. so much louder than, you know, the eight or nine words that it takes to create the sentence. But, yeah. Initially, like, I'd always been very, I'd always been very relaxed on stage, always been very relaxed on stage.

Nervous, you know, when you're starting out, nervous when you're doing gigs, and nervous when you're initially, you know, being viewed. But at the core, I felt like. I'd always done my homework. I'd done my due diligence on what I was presenting. So, you know, like we said before, I could take what came back as well. So that led, particularly when I was doing the show that I mentioned before, which was where I would do a series of like two-act comedy plays in the downstairs at the Albany Bar,

where the audience were part of the show. It was like Cheers, and I played the like the San Malone type character. I would have an informal relationship with the customers of the bar. So we'd be doing our scenes, and I would be, as they do in Cheers, I really liked the idea of like, Cheers still functions as a bar when the sitcom is happening. Like you see Carla and Diane serving customers, and you see, you know, coach pulling a beer and Woody and, you know, and the nuts being filled up and, you know, Diane might be cutting lemons or sam will be cutting lemons or something like and i loved i loved that it that casual

nature of of work going on as the actors are acting and and so i would be very much like as we'd be doing our scenes a load under the albany i'd be giving audience nuts i'd be taking their drinks and i'd be going behind the bar and you know pulling a pint which created a sense of sort of unofficial chaos that i recognized immediately which is well and with the with the with the people that were running the venue, watching the show in the room, this actor is just pouring people drinks and giving them shorts. Who's keeping a tot of all of this? He is literally acting like it is bar. And I found that there were a couple of nights where I would do that, where I would find that gap between me doing something ad hoc in the moment would create a different type of

laugh and a different type of frisson that would enhance the scripted stuff. So that's another notion of like, so I was very comfortable walking around a room, putting my hand on the audience just so the audience weren't fearful for me. I wasn't, they didn't, they didn't carry any kind of threat to me. I got my confidence, I suppose, or I could hide any nerves that I might have through being confident with them. So that's another thing. The third thing I think is just, it was boredom. It was, you know, I, when I did a show, my first solo show in, in Edinburgh was in 2007 and it was a single character story it was comedy but it was very much written like a play um and um and it was it was a very very good show i'd revisited it again and done it and it

it worked no one came to see it no one came to see it but the judges um so i had i had these judges come in for the i suppose i'd have been up for a newcomer at that stage um come in and see me they were the only people in the room literally the only people in the room i had like three three, five, six, and, you know, and I'd be doing all my own tickets, so I'd like see that they booked in and be like, okay, so I've got no sales, I've got no reviews, but I might win an award at the end of this, which is easy. What's everybody worried about? But I did that, and that's, that had this character carrying on that informality with the audience. It was a, it was a lecture, a faux lecture on DVD piracy.

And again, I found that, like, I could talk to them. And then occasionally, just during the month, I'd be like, I wonder if they'll, I wonder if they'll talk back. You know, I wonder if they'll do that. And, okay, or how about, would they like, if I was telling them how tight my ass was, would they punch it? And they would. And so I found myself doing things to keep myself interested from the rigour of doing the rigor of doing this. same lines every day in and out. If there was no one in the room and there was no reviewer coming and there was no

agents, you know, or producers or anybody interested in anything further to what I was producing myself, then at least I needed to have something from that day's performance. What did I need? I needed to make myself laugh or make the techie laugh or, you know, whatever. And at that same time with that show, I went to go and see single comedians doing character hours and

bar one who was it it was Simon Brodkin's hour he did a show in the in the Pleasance Beside where he did

multi-characters did Lee Nelson and someone else and his his setup was is that all the characters' costumes were hung on

coat hangers behind him and and I was like and I think Lee Nelson might be emceeing it is like a gig or something

but other than Simon doing that um every other character act and and i saw some that were very very well thought of their shows were like they were just so cold and they were so uh still and they could be funny and they and and the characters could be could be great but the whole feel of the show just didn't feel live and live is a very very important thing for me um as as a as an environment uh as an art form and also as like we're saying all the way through as a feeling like there is a reason why lots of stuff works well in a room that doesn't work well on TV and that is because it's happening

right there in front of you and there is something something powerful about that as a feeling cinema is my favorite art form to watch and to enjoy but to experience hands down live like if if I can feel if you if a stranger can make me feel something in whatever it is good, bad, happy, sad, angry, you know, excited, all of that stuff. If you can take me from a standing start from the day that I've just had as an audience member, and you can make me feel, you can make me forget the day that I've just had, good God, like that's a powerful, you know, that's a potent brute. And these shows didn't make me feel that when I'd see them.

And so when it came to creating my first character hour, I wanted the show to, I wanted the room to be alive. at all times. I wanted the room to be excited at all times and not know what was coming next because that's that's the key to it being funny as well. And part of that was alongside me needing to keep myself interested and myself alive on stage, because I would be the reason why the room was alive, was then sometimes going to myself, that bit that you've written, it's a bit chunky, Like, how about we just have a bit of fun here? And I would just, I would, I would, I would, you know, I, I constructed a show, the first

character show I did where, where most of the moments, no, no, no. There were five characters, I think, in the first show, and I think three of them had audience participation in, one, the end point of which, fatefully, unfortunately, because it's the show that I broke my leg in, the... the audience participation would be a stooge. So there'd be a character piece, two character pieces where I'd grab audience members up, another character piece that was like a play,

a 10-minute play, that was always the Marmite bit of that show. And then there'd be a character piece with this. And bit by bit, show by show, I found that like, like I said before, that the moments that were with the audience, the electricity that that would create, the ream of jokes that would just reveal themselves between suddenly you have a notion of a front row, which is, you know, the splash zone at sea world.

Suddenly you've got people that are sitting in seats unwittingly going to become part of the show. And that opens up a whole new world of ad libs, interactions, all of that stuff. Then you can play with the rows beyond. You know, they each have a personality then. So the room itself is a character. The room, it's said where people have chosen to sit, you know, it's created this, this, you know, compendium of, of gags that I can mine. And like I say, as long as I was alive to it, as long as I was open to it, I could create a show that satisfied me as a writer, because the writing stuff would be written and designed. The audience participation would be designed in terms of what I want.

Why is this character doing it? What is it that they're looking for? what is it that only an audience member can provide them so that's the reason why they bring them up well that created its own things and then you've got the magic dust the 10% of magic dust which is what they might do who they might are how they might react and then how I can spin on that and I took that as like the greatest thrill that I could that I could have because I was I was literally having my cake and eating it I was making something up as I went along at the same time as I had full thorough control over the environment.

So both sides of my personality, the dreamer and the psychopathic control freak, they're both getting satisfied in this moment. And so that, of course, you know, like I said before about where I was doing my shows, you know, like the audience would be firing out into the courtyard, only 40, 50 people in that little room. But there were 40, 50 people that were like,

eyes wide and their heart had been beating for 50, 50, 55 minutes, because at any given moment, they literally didn't know what was going to happen next. Because not only could I be unpredictable within the character sketch, the running order could be unpredictable, because I'd go back to just being a fourth wall character. And they were like, in any given moment, they might be in this. So you certainly have this fresh electricity that you've created by the show's design, which is great. No material. No technical sound effects and everything. Just pure live interaction that in that moment started to create show by show, festival by festival year on year. It started to create a conversation with audience members of, I was in the show where you did that and you did that.

Does that happen every day? No. And then they talk about themselves. Well, on the show where I was in this happened and this guy came up and he was doing this. And suddenly you have the greatest thing that you can get in an festival environment, which is word of mouth. And suddenly my flyers that I couldn't afford too much of, my posters that I didn't have anywhere, my PR, my producers, my representations that I didn't have. Well, I suddenly had audience members, the best representation going around Scotland, talking about the show where this happened to this guy in this moment and he did this. And so that then became the USP. And I was, I was alive to it in terms of knowing that, like, I'd struck gold here, struck gold for me, but also, like I say, audience and voice, I'd struck gold there. It can become, and it did become a slight cross on the back, because suddenly people are coming up to you years later and going like, you're actually not a bad writer. And you're like, yeah, it's all been written. Or like, people say, like, you can act. And you're like, yeah, like, I'm not.

I don't drink Yakult, like, you know, off stage. Like, when you see me drinking six of the one after another, I'm as disgusted as you. That's the feeling that I wanted to create that you're now representing for me in the room. I'm as horrified as you are that this guy's spitting in my mouth. I don't want that to happen. But, like, that's what we're doing here. I don't want to get thrown. It's the downside, isn't it?

It's that if you hit your wagon to explosive risk, that's an incredibly memorable thing. word of mouth does a huge favor for your Edinburgh experience. And then as a result, they come out, they talk about the explosive risk, but maybe that's mostly what they're talking about. So a bit of a double-edged sword. Yes, got it. So it was born of, it was born of invention. It was born of boredom. It was born of, of wanting to, you know, chase that feeling again. And then it was born of proof of concept. Like, it worked. People responded. And but what was, and you might have been wanted to go here what was very interesting and it's why i i you know lots of reasons why i steered in different directions with with my live work but um so i did that so all those shows

built up to that one that won the award and then i did another show um whereby whereby the front row was was a personality in of itself and it was the show in 2014 was probably the peak, oddly, rather than the show where I won the award, of that perfect mix of people not knowing who I was and people that did know who I was and the clash of those two audience experiences in the room as, you know, the room would never fill up from the front row. And then when people would sit on the front row, people would be laughing at those people before I'd even begun because they knew. And then I could drop gags and then I could make references to what was coming next and I could trailer it and then I'd get laughs of stuff that I hadn't even

done yet that was coming, there was forthcoming. What happens in 2017 with the character show is I noticed a gigantic shift in audience behaviour in the rooms, is that people were coming for that. And the front rows would fill up first. And families would sit their dad on the front row and they'd sit behind them and have their phones ready. And stagdos would come on mass and have the stag ready and they would disrupt the show to get my attention all the way through and I started to see him yeah I started to see that and of course they're the worst people that you can pick and you know you have to you know it's that fine balance of like do you acknowledge it do you ignore it will it quiet and itself on the way when you ignore a stag party and there's 20

of them their arms are folded because they're not getting the experience that they want so you have this powerful negative energy on one side of you where they're fed up that they didn't get the show that they wanted from you. And that's, you know, there's lots of audience behavior changed for me in that show. And it started to become less fun for me because I was not, I'm not taking requests here. You know, like this is not like a tribute act. I'm not here to just humiliate people. That may be what you're reading from what I'm doing. But if you look at most of the stuff that the audience members do in most of the sketches, I'm always the idiot. I'm always the fool. And they're always trying to be celebrated and trying to help me get to a

different plane. And it's never really like, I certainly don't have the intention to make them look to you. That would be a highway to nothing, I think, that you could just try and, and then you have that other thing of like, so if I do follow that path, am I trying to, like out shock and out and out utre myself you know like am i trying to do that and there was one there was one sketch in that show the 2017 show was quite instructive in that in that in that regard i had you know i never ever believe in writing an hour i think an hour's a stupid like the time to write for um i'd always aim i think naturally it's like you know they work best at like 45 50 minutes you know a live show and um and i would often write 50 minutes

also start late so that no one would go like hang on a minute we're out early and then and then and then and then often you know I I could indulge audience participation to pad it out if need be and whatever and I could I could cut with that but with the 2017 show I got a 45 minute I got a good 45 minute show and I was like well that sketch that comes there what's what's the next but I just need a five minute hit I just need to finish this so I I quickly, and I mean quickly, I came up with this character that was this diner hostess called Debbie, American diner hostess, who ran an all-you-can-eat barbecue and foot spa. And so the idea was, is that, like, you'd come in and I'd give you whatever food you want, and whilst you're doing that, you'd put your feet in the foot spa that I had on stage of you. Sounds lovely, right? What a great treat. but of course the levels that it went to was that like the food would go into the foot spa and it would be it would be because I'd be Cajun, it would be a seafood gumbo so it would be

pilchards, it would be tuna and it would all go into that sea where you're getting your feet supposedly cleaned and scrubbed and it would be a play on that idea of like this little fish that were eating people's dead skin were like I'd put like cans of herring in there and then I would drink the gumbo in the foot spa and I would drink it and and it was legitimately for everybody concerned appalling like it was it was wild it was the perfect kind of like five minute that's going to be like Jesus Christ but in that moment I was like what the fuck am I doing man like I've got to clean this foot spa out every night like thoroughly with bleach so that I don't die let alone them like there'd be times where like people would obviously they they

they weren't reluctant to get involved, you know, but with that comes the idea of like, they're taking their socks off and they've got plasters on this on their feet. And you're like, ha, ha, ha, ha, they've been walking around Edinburgh all day and it's been raining. And I'm like, so I would take longer to wash their feet, but obviously I wouldn't change the water. The fish would go straight in there. And I would just, at a moment, Stevie came up with me for that year and she wasn't performing. And I'd get back home and she'd be like, wow, you look absolutely hollow. and I was like, yeah, and it's hollow from the inside.

Like, I am, I am what, I've, I've, I've, I've jumped my own shark, but I've used tuna, you know, like I've, and it was funny and it worked, but I just thought there, if I'm thinking now, like, along those terms, and it's very easy to think like that in those terms, how much, what else could they do? Where else could I take them? I'd done some wonderful stuff with them and wonderfully like inventive and imaginative and visual and and just silly stuff with them where the intention was pure and the intention was fun. Once the intention starts to get disgusting and crossing the line and everything, well, I'm not, I'm not into that. And that's sort of where they're encouraging me to go to. They want me to do to do that. And so, so that's where the audience interaction started to just kind of like thin away. And then you had, you know, I did do other shows with great audience interaction.

I did a show which was a murder mystery thing, a Beakington Town Hall murders where, but the whole room was involved. And it was like en masse. And it was like whittling everybody down to find a murderer. And I had to legitimately work out who the murderer was. The room knew and I didn't. And I had to use tricks and everything to it. And it worked brilliantly.

But it was a different type of interaction. It's still, and then coach, coach, different type of audience interaction, like using them in that way. So I started to try and find ways in which narratively I could use the device to enhance the situation and the story rather than like individually in a gig kind of sketch or, you know, tiny, tiny moment. Let's talk about Sean Bean. I'm mindful of time. I could talk all day. You may not be able to. No, I'm cool.

Yeah, I'm cool for time. I want to make sure we hit Sean Bean, bow and ball, and then of course, Ginny. So let's talk about Sean Bean because I think of Sean. like you're like I didn't really do any set up at the beginning of this recording and I'll do it in the in the intro but one of my most cherished memories of many many many many Edinburgh's was seeing dungeons and bastards with you doing like the get you know Sean Bean in a feud fur coat doing sort of game of Thrones Sean Bean and as you say exactly as you sort of set up there earlier on you were saying come out strong one liners and like what you know real punchy character

driven, ridiculous one-liners, totally in the world, set out your stall, this is what I'm doing. And then it led into this completely, me and my mate with the back of the room, killing ourselves laughing, recommend it to everyone that year. I just loved it to bit. To remind myself of some of the gear, I then went and kind of looked on YouTube, or I kind of Googled Adam Rich's Sean Bean. And I would urge anyone watching this to watch some of the compilations from Cats Does Countdown, which I didn't watch at the time, and I didn't see. But I was like, this is an absolute treasure trobe, of you doing one-liners as Sean Bean. Really funny interaction stuff as well

with some of the, you know, the host and the guest of the show. But for me, like, my favourite stuff is I wasn't born, I was smelted. And, you know, like, what's your favorite? The whole reaction with, the interaction with Jimmy about what's your favorite movie and like, you know, which one, which one, which one.

All of that stuff. Just absolutely in love with the invention of it. And I suppose my question really is, my first question on that is, for me, that's like, oh, this one. is lightning in a bottle. Does it feel like that for you as well as someone who has done numerous characters and, you know, too many characters to count? Did that, the first time you did, Sean Bean, did you go, oh, wow, this one, I'm going to do this one for a while?

It was very successful very, very quickly. But often when you do, you know, like if you do an original character, then you've got to create that character. and who they are, what they think, the world they operate in for the audience, you know, through writing. With, if you're playing a named character, Sean Bean, Daniel Day Lewis, I did Pierce Brosnan as a centaur one year. I don't like, yeah, I wish I'd seen that. It sounds like, sounds like, then you've given, you've given the audience a head start. So like they know, so there is a difference, there's a different, um, freedom that comes with writing gags about. a name of a character that the audience immediately know ahead of time and then you're just already just playing on what they already know and different things like that so there is a

there is a different type of joy in writing let's say an unoriginal character as opposed to an original character there's a different type of joy and freedom that comes with that I first did him as on a radio show that I had for Radio 4. And no, no, I first did him as an improvisation for a Saturday night live audition tape. Yeah, which a dreadful tape, dreadful, dreadful, again, a total failure. The only good thing to come out of it was a very good thing. I found I could just drip into that.

He's got a different performance energy than a lot of the characters that I've played. he's more withdrawn he's more I because of that gap between the audience's previous knowledge of the real Sean Bean I can afford to take a step back and let them come to me as opposed to if I'm creating mastermind well if they don't know the board game the gap is for me to cover you know what I mean like it's that yeah I've got to fill that in and then we can meet but but with Sean Bean they're coming at me like they're like gone so So I found that I could improvise as him very, very easily because he was, you know, the watchwords, just to keep in my head, which is he's vague, he's medieval. And he never understands any medium he's in, never understands it.

So just always make him slightly vague and confused, but incredibly confident because of that. He's incredibly confident with everything. So, but yeah, immediately like it was a voice that I hadn't done before, an energy behind a voice. and an intention behind a character that I hadn't done before, I don't think. And also like just an endless, an endless inspiration of one-liners and that you could, you could mind. And honing in on the medieval aspect of him, which of course, like, he is far from known of just that. Like, you know, like he's done so much stuff. So it's, so yeah, so it was, it was immediately, you know, like I say, like the order is me.

Me, then the material, then the audience. Like, yeah, I knew, I knew straight away. I was like, oh, yeah, I feel good doing this as a character. I made a decision very, very quickly on that, on that 2014 show, that the last time they'd see me, I think I did Daniel Day Lewis on stage. So the next time they were going to see me was, I was going to do another character. And I was going to start the show with someone who they already knew. so that, because I knew on that show, like I say, I was going to get 50% of audiences that had heard that I was a successful act who'd never seen me, and 50% of audiences that had seen me and followed me maybe all the way through meeting. So the perfect meeting point for those two audience brains in a big room was to give them a character that they knew that they hadn't seen before.

And so that very much helped. And I did a big set piece. That was where the playing of people's hair came around. and I would be full suit of armour. And the design of that one-man show was to get naked. I was going to be, so I'd start the show as Sean Bean in full armour, in full Game of Thrones furs, and then throughout the show, as I would play different characters, I'd get more and more undressed.

And then the last sketch was me as the Victor character, who can be quite similar to Sean Bean in a lot of ways, having a shower on stage with me just wearing a towel, and then getting in the shower, with me in waterproofs and rubbing radox in me. But he was such a standout hit from that, from that show that it was just like, yeah, like I could, could I write endless stuff with this guy? Maybe not.

But is he going to be, and I certainly wasn't thinking of Cats Does Countdown or any of that stuff. But as a as a fast track for the audience to just start laughing quickly, he was, he was great. So, yeah, he was an instant. He was an instant hit. I think I did, was he in any other shows? I'm not, I can't remember if I did him live other than just that one show. I can't, it doesn't, yeah, it's not in my head, but when the Dungeons and Barsest this thing came

along. So that was 20, 22, I think. And so we'd had, I'd done the show in 2019, which was the big murder mystery show. Yeah. And that was a very difficult personal. year for me and I came off stage and it was like I said the show went brilliantly well but my heart had had gone out of everything and I knew that I wanted to try and write something different and so I did and then the pandemic happened and I was writing something in there but obviously like

a consequence of pandemic was how it affected the live environment and obviously within the live environment if you're a comedian whose USP is audience participation proximity on stage people you know A very different time emerged in 2022, say, than there was that I left in 2019. And obviously, I'd change the way that I was thinking about participation. But a number of factors had kind of come into my life and in my career where I knew that, like, at some point, I'd need to get back on the horse and do some live work. And so the show that I really wanted to write was the Jimmy Conner's play. And I couldn't get anyone to make that with me. And that was a play.

That wasn't a comedy show. But it felt like the right show for me to make at that time. And I couldn't get any support going. But I don't have an agent and I wanted to get an agent. And I was like, well, I need to go back to Edinburgh. And Edinburgh, I think in 2022 was the first one maybe where it felt like an Edinburgh of old. You know, like all the venues were running. All the acts were going.

going. And so I had two other shows that I possibly could do. One was a multi-character show that I really didn't want to do because it felt like a backward step. And one was like an absolute just like cut loose late night party show almost with Sean, with Sean Bean. And because I really wanted to do the play and it couldn't happen. And I didn't happen. And I ended up going to Edinburgh with those two shows, both of them somewhat became the ugly sister. They were shows that I didn't really care about and I didn't really think too much about because I was so far from wanting to do that. And the show that I really wanted to do and fall in love with for a month, I couldn't do. And I felt all kinds of resentment and frustration about that.

that for the first time, the first time coming back was the first time where I felt where I couldn't do what I wanted to do. And I felt handcuffed and I felt forgotten and I felt isolated and frustrated. Now, as it turns out, I decided to do that multi-character show in the cafe at the underbelly. And I deliberately did it as almost kind of like a work in progress type show, but I didn't bill it as such. but it was very, very stripped back. It was no lights. You know, it's in a cafe. It's in an afternoon slot.

They shut it down. I just do my stuff and then come out. It did brilliantly well. It sold out the entire run, you know, albeit in a small cafe. It got great reviews. But I just, I was like, I was like a husk performing it. I just couldn't connect with it. And it just felt like I was doing a tribute show to myself.

Some really lovely stuff in there. Really lovely lines, really lovely characters, but it didn't matter because my heart had gone out. You wouldn't know it, maybe, to watch it, certainly from the performance, because you've got a hundred, 10% of me, as always. I couldn't cheat the audience in that regard, but I just felt hollow. And in that same month, two weeks into the festival was when I started Dungeons and Bastards. And I think I remember, because I came from the back of the room in that room. And I think you must have come on the opening night, because I remember walking past you on the high stool. Were you on the high stools at the back?

It was, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I didn't know what that was going to be. And I was just like, oh, I've got it is, I've now, at the point where I feel the less like me, I've now got to be the most me, you know, a late night, you know, with this guy. I've got to deliver. And from minute, you know, your experience of that, watching that show was my experience of doing it.

Again, no previews, no rehearsals, no tests or anything like that. I got out there and immediately that room like just set fire to itself and it carried me and I needed that show and through the course of that, I only did it for like a week and a half, maybe two weeks, but I knew that I'd found something there which was going to be very, very cathartic and useful for me as I was taking these steps towards creating a different vein of work with more theatrical play straight to. stuff is that as much as I would always say that I was an actor who worked in comedy throughout the years I had become a comedian and I'd become a comedian that loved the juice of what that environment could give and when I was in that room and that room went nuts for Sean and the audience the audience created the show that they wanted me to give and I couldn't have been more vulnerable to give them everything that they wanted and suddenly maybe a lot of this stuff I've been speaking about before about the audience

were the last people, you know, to matter, I think in that show they were the first because I, like I say, I was quite broken about a lot of things. And I have, I have and still am quite broken about a lot of things to do with the industry and, and different aspects of it, very, very brokenhearted about the realities of what it's like to work in this world as opposed to what I hoped it would be like to work in this world. That show reminded me of everything that, that got me doing this in the first place and I just knew that like whatever I do and that's why you know I've created a Christmas tour of it now that's like I know that whatever I do I need that I need to go in a room for an hour as him and I need to just cut loose and he can have every

idea that got red penned from previous shows because they were too silly or too ridiculous because the audiences that love that character really love me doing that character. They really love it. And there's something very nice, I think, for me at a different stage of my career where I realize now that like, the audience can guide me on this one,

that I will create the popcorn movie for them. They might have to sit through me doing a Jimmy Conner's, you know, our bass player wrote this indulgent kind of jazz Odyssey. They might have to write it through that. And, you know, coach, coach is a similar thing in that, you know, it's important to me to tell a story and then we'll get to the, you know, the fun of it. But with that, it's just, no, it's fun. It's fun, fun, fun, fun. As an audience member, I was just like, I love everything about this from the gut. Like, apps are just like, just put this in my face. I just loved it. I'm thrilled that you're doing the tour. You'll come,

we'll talk, well, I'll promo the tour with the episode, but I know you're coming to Bristol. And I've basically got a pencil for a gig. And if I'm not at my gig, I'm bringing all my friends coming to see Sean Bean. It's the Christmas show. I just loved all of that. I really want to have enough space to talk about Bowenball and Connors. And I can't, if it's okay, I would love to just ask about that aspects of the industry things and feeling broken. And I don't want you to sort of go into any places you don't want to go into.

But a few times you've referred to not having an. agent, not having a team, not having, and comedy can be such a lonely place. And I've done, I've done Edinburgh without people, and I've done Edinburgh with people. And the difference is, it's just a whole different world. It's like, it's like first contact. You know, it's like, I think like aliens go, oh, you're good enough that you can have connection to the alien technology. It can feel just a world apart. And you can see it happening to other people. You can be very early in your career. You can see, oh, that person has been teleported onto the mothership and swoon like this. I've been left here on earth.

It can feel so isolating. And I'm just interested in how you have kind of processed that and what things you have, like what was the problem and how have you navigated it? Yeah. Well, I mean, I would imagine this comes across with some of the things that I've said. Like, I am a very romantic person.

And the purity of, the live environment and the performance aspect and the joy and the shared experience and all of that stuff that's that's the that's the drug for me like I love that feeling I love I love creating that in a room I love being the architect of that and and I you know I've never I've never shied away from the fact that my contract with this industry is to just is to just write and create. And if I do that, and I do that to the best of my ability, then that's all I can do. That's all I can control. And that's all I can kind of provide. What anybody wants to do with that beyond my, you know, my reach, well, that's up to them. And I've never really, you know,

because I'm not doing anything with an intention to become something, the doing of it is it for me. Like the making of the thing is it for me. Like, you know, John and I doing ball and bow together. The show that you see on stage that's been tremendously successful that people have written very, very nice things of and, and, you know, and bought lots and lots of tickets for, that's probably the least funny material that John and I have come up with to do with those. you get to see the least funny stuff that John and I have done with ball and bow because the funniest stuff is me and John like hanging out. The funniest stuff is me and John making each other laugh. And we learned very quickly with that show that like the room doesn't really want to see me and John do our schick.

They don't want to see us do audience participation. They feel a bit uncomfortable with that. They've bought a ticket to see me and John play ball and bow. So play ball and bow and be funny as them and make each other laugh. laugh, but make each other laugh as them. We don't want any of your business. The journey is everything, you know, the making of it is everything. And the memories of me and John in the dressing rooms, you know, before and after the shows on, you know, you know, hanging out with each other. That's the memory of the show for me. The show itself is your memory and the audience is

memory. And that's great. And I love that it's successful. And I love that it connected with with a lot of people. So that's pretty much a definition of kind of my mindset, I suppose, in terms of my relationship with the industry is that, like, I'm not looking to, I'm not looking to make you give me a TV show. I'm not looking for you to, you know, like that's up to you. Like what you see and how you see me and what you think I can do, that's up to you to present to me.

And also, it's up to you to present to me and say, like, what do you want to do? you know, have carte blanche and doing it. The industry, certainly from my point onwards, carte blanche was just never a, never a factor. You read all these stories about your heroes and the way that shows were commissioned and shows happened and, you know, all that stuff. Well, that might as well be another planet

compared to the industry that I encountered when I, you know, when I kind of like arrived. So you have a lack of probably real desire to make a television show or to be famous or to be a star or to be ubiquitous. You have that, you know, because I'm just interested in doing what I'm doing. And then you have it mixed up with the actual experiences of working with the industry itself. And I would say that in conversations with other people where I've told them about different things and different situations, I would say that I've probably had some fairly extreme

situations and fairly extreme relationships on different projects with different people and in different environments. Situations that possibly, you know, would have sunk a different ship. And I'm lucky we talk about like the double-edged sword of like audience participation is that like it creates this wonderful thing and become. you're a USP, but then it can be a cross to bear as people think that's all you can do and everything like that. Well, I would say that there is a different deeper level to that as well, which is a positive, which is because of the fact that I'm not chasing anything,

it's meant that I haven't been sunk as a ship going forward when those things haven't happened. And I've got close to lots of things, you know, and I've had great successes. I certainly wouldn't complain about anything. but I think I think the idea of like I can't get too swept up in what hasn't happened and what isn't happening because there are very very clear reasons for me about why those things haven't happened that I've worked hard to try and make my reasons rather than someone else's and I don't mean by trying to brainwash or change history or you know kind of paper over things but just legitimately looking like as an example with with with with with with with representation as an agent, I didn't have an agent for a long time because I was waiting for the right agent. And I mean like, I'd been, I'd started writing in like the year, well, like a university. I started in 1996. And I got, I got an agent then at, um, a Manchester. But then when I decided to leave Manchester, where I was writing, performing, coming out to London,

uh, what I said I wanted to do in terms of just write plays and just, you know, develop that, Well, they weren't going to represent me down in London for that. So I just left. And I made that decision that, like, I would not be, I wouldn't have a representative until I felt that they were, A, the right person. And by the right person, it would mean that they would be delivering what they could do on the same level and commitment that I would be doing on stage. And that's that contract thing.

Like, that's my contract. Like, I will just present ideas one after another, and I will do them as best that I can. I'm waiting to meet people that will, you know, see, see that and get as excited about that as I am and then look to do it. And it came with this agent I mentioned before, who was very, very good, with a very big agency. And perfect. I could, she was very good at like letting her acts evolve and discover themselves. And then she left the industry. I stayed with the agency.

and then I got very successful with, you know, with live stuff. And from that point on, I would say, and I'm sort of, I can look at it back sort of like a 10 to 15 year period, I would say that like I've probably enjoyed everything that I've done a degree less since I became more successful than I did beforehand because suddenly you're asked in the immediacy, certainly after winning an award, you're immediate. asked a question of so what do you want to do well i've never asked myself that question at all i've quite literally been making this up as i go along like quite literally that is that is my career and i am i'm working out what i am and who i am right in front of you in my writing in my performance

like you've got to use your skill set to see what you might want to do with me i can't tell you that. I can't do it. And for a while, I was waylaid because that question's very time-sensitive when you have success. You know, and, you know, I remember, you know, I'd do Edinburgh's and I'd see, you know, because I'd producer myself, I'd see who'd come in. I'd, you know, I'd see the list of comps that were asking to come in. And then I'd cross-reference that with the list of meetings that I got from those people. And it'd be like, oh, okay, so I'm just your night out then. You're not interested in making it. Fine. Then I probably won't give you comp. in the future, or I will at least ask you if you email me for a comp, yeah, hi, what are you interested in? Because you've seen me, you've seen me 10 times now. I know I've got the data. You've seen me 10 times. Is this going to lead to a meeting? Is this going to lead to a discussion about what we might make? Invariably, it wouldn't. And so that kind of, that question, what do you want to do? Like, what do you want to be? I just think that that lacks.

That lacks all the imagination that I am showing in terms of what I am doing. And I think that, like, that was a very, you know, a very early kind of like, oh, this isn't, this isn't how I thought it might be. And oddly, I didn't know how it might be. But the books I've read, the documentaries I've watched, I didn't happen like that for them. And then you'd have situations whereby, you know, you'd have certain offers and you've had certain. scripts and you'd look at them and you go, oh, I don't know, I don't like that. I don't want to do that. And you suddenly become someone that says no a lot.

And I'm not saying no because I don't want to do anything. I'm saying no because what I'm reading, I don't think, I don't, I wouldn't watch this. I wouldn't make it. There's also another subsection, which is the idea of like the, the platforms on television to reach a broader audience for a character or a sketch act, well, they were non-existent. And Dictionary Corner came along. It's probably the only one, really. I wasn't going to go on any other panel show.

I'm not going to go on as myself, for reasons we've already, you know, explored. Like, and I'm certainly not going to go on as a friggin character. Like, that's just not going to work at all. So what do you do? Like, where do you go? Like, those avenues that think. And so, you know, my, my mind. mindset was always like, well, why am I the one that's going to do your work for you?

Like, again, listening to the Stantown guys talk about that. Like, yeah, why am I, why am I having to come up with everything? Why am I crossing the T's and dot in the eyes here? Like, what have you got to the table? You've seen what I can do. You've liked it enough to call me it. So these aren't like instant revelations. These aren't like instant kind of like things that would happen.

These are just things that over a period of time, I would. have, you know, and moments and, you know, different interactions with different people had different levels of, like, real genuine heartbreak, real genuine heartbreak. Like, I would, without going into too much detail, I would say that, like, a relationship that I really, really wanted and could happily see myself evolving throughout the years with someone like the BBC were that led to so much absolute heartbreak in terms of like the ways that I was spoken to the the the the um the situations I felt I was I was put in just like real and as such a low level that it just like it just chipped away and I I gradually found myself

it sort of it sort of reached a peak with the coach coach as a show I did that for the reasons I mentioned before, like looking to evolve, looking to change my voice. And again, like looking at what I've done, I think I've, you know, it's very hard to sustain a career in character comedy, you know, you want to stay, you know, it's very hard to sustain a career full stop in entertainment and in comedy. But as character comedy, it is, it is harder to do that. A lot of the stuff you're doing, like you ultimately, become, you know, the stuff that you're lampooning, the authority figures. You become the older person, the drier person, the less mobile, you know, all that stuff. You become it. So,

but I've always looked to just evolve the storytelling behind those characters and keep myself interested. And I've noticed that when I do that, when I'm really, really challenged with what my brain is presenting to me as an idea, it generally creates the more interesting work for me. And so wanting to kind of follow that. So I feel like I have sort of spell that out, but coach coach was a very interesting show for me to do, which was a show where I eschewed the idea of it just being me. I brought in a cast of other comedians. And we did a sports show that ended with an audience participation moment. Probably the greatest audience participation moment I could ever come up with, if I'm honest, a very profound moment that could bind the audience watching

the show with the characters who are performing in the show and the actors who are playing those characters, if that moment where an audience member shot a ball in a match to win the game or lose the game, that would define the whole evening. And it was live and we couldn't script it. And if it happened, it was, if it didn't happen, which it, you know, it always didn't happen, it was the funniest thing to have dedicated an entire hour to. And these characters were playing kids. So you were heartbreaking these kids. You could look for this all on an audience member who stood up for five minutes to do something that they didn't ask to do and they've ruined everybody's lives and cost us the game and the title. But also, if it did happen,

oh my word, oh my word, I've never experienced anything on a stage like the moment where an audience member won the game for us in real time with one throw. Oh, and that's, you know, I'm trying to develop that show bigger and broader because I do think it could be a very good, like, by Sten type show, but I felt I was evolving. That didn't necessarily chime with a lot of people that were working with me, around me or watching me. They wanted just me. They just wanted to see me. They wanted what they'd seen before. Why was I spending so much time with other people? And that was a real moment where I was at a crossroads because I just thought, this seems to me like the most natural path for me to go down with what I've been doing, that it just looks.

like the obvious thing that I should do that you take a character comedian and you put him in a narrative and you use the skill that he's defined with the audience participation and you make it you make it bulletproof in the narrative and then you just let everybody share in the joy of that as we build up to that moment and it couldn't have the show did very well and got reviewed very well but in terms of like any kind of like interest in taking that forward it couldn't have been quieter and that really created a separation in me because I just thought that tuning fork that I've heard, that I've entrusted all the way through, oh, I'm way off here. Because to me, with my business producer industry brain, yeah, that's, that's it.

And yet the reality is, no, that's not it. Like, why are you doing this? And I wanted to do a second one. Anyway, lots of situations evolved. And then more importantly, my home life got very, very difficult. My mother and father and my older brother got very ill. I then found that my presence and commitment and relationship with the industry was being put up against my time and my priorities and my real want in terms of being there for family members. And it came a poor a thousandth on the list and so I made the decision to to just step away

I didn't think I had I didn't think I had the I didn't think I had the trust maybe in the representation that I had that I could take a break but to be fair to those people concerned I never discussed it I'm sure

that they would have been as, you know, as open-minded and kind to have understood why I might want to do that and take a bit of a sabbatical from that. But I just didn't do it. I just, I needed to kind of like, I suppose I needed to make a statement on two fronts. I needed to tell myself what was really important by my defining action, which was to take a step away. So I left the agency. And then I didn't have representation. I kept on writing and kept on performing and doing stuff, but I didn't have representation with that. And, you know, as much as you can kind of look at different things with the industry and things like that, you know, they are important. They need to reevaluate

their importance, I think, as the industry evolves and platforms evolve. But they are important. And of course, I would never stop writing and performing. So my contract's going to be filled. But obviously, the options in terms of what I can then do in terms of castings for other people's projects, which I love to do, well, they're not going to come my way. Or if they do, they come few and far between because you're just not getting pushed. You're not just at the front of a list. And this is a very, very busy supermarket that we're in. The queue behind us, if you forget an item and you need to go back, well, you're going to have to go back to. And then you throw in a pandemic, you know, and then the industry itself, you know, where I've got my strongest presence

collapses, so to speak, with the live thing. So that kind of takes us full circle to the decision to make the character show in 2022 and Dungeons and Bastards and Dungeons and Bastards and Bastards totally reigniting my feelings and my kind of thing. But that's that's probably where the disillusion comes in. It's like it's it wasn't it wasn't what I thought it was going to be and it isn't what I thought it was going to be and it's ever changing and it never will be. I think the the lesson and the full circle back to it and, you know, gratefully the audience being the people that provided that to me, given how ignored they were and maltreated in the beginning, the idea that, like, I was reminded by a performance and an audience encouragement

to remember that it actually is the writing, the journey, you know, the exploration of the stories and the characters that you want to write, that's all that matters, because everything else will follow from that. And I've seen that, you know, I've just come off the back of two very, very successful live shows in different mediums. And of course, you know, suddenly people are talking to you. Suddenly people think, I still haven't got an agent because, you know, the right one hasn't come along. But I'm much, much, much more comfortable accepting that that is probably where I am at the moment in that when the right one presents themselves, it'll be for the right reasons. And they'll see me in the right environment. And then, you know, what will happen will happen

in that direction. But if it doesn't happen, my contract is the same. I just, I got a 101 ideas and not many years left to realize them. So I just have to, I just have to get on my bike because no one's, you know, the cavalry are not coming in, in terms of like your career. You are the cavalry. Like, you, you don't blow a horn and they come and save you. No, no, no, no, no. Swim. Like, you're in the water. You're paddling. You can swim. You could float. Like, so swim. teach yourself how to swim and keep swimming. I'm so thrilled for you. And I'm so pleased to have seen that show,

that specific Dunders and Bastards' Show, which is the equivalent of the audience member, just hitting the hoop immediately, and it's just hoops for an hour and probably longer. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm so thrilled for you to have reconnected with that thing

because I think part of what I was thinking as you were sort of depicting that disillusionment with the industry with you is the romantic kind of going, there's a thing that I expected this would be like and it doesn't seem to be like that. And I've spoken to so many people on this show, on this podcast, who have either been kicked down doors people who are like, oh, this isn't what I expected. I'm going to have to kick the fucking door down. And so many people have gone, oh, this isn't what I thought it was at all. This is horrible. This is, do you mean that like so many people feel like,

I remember Alan Cochran saying in a very early episode, feeling like the invisible man of comedy. Just feeling like, hey, the audiences are loving this. Why isn't that reflected? Where is the progression? What, you know, the early part of your career, progression, progression, more stage time, more audiences. And then, oh, I thought that would go somewhere. And so often it doesn't. And I'm so, I'm so pleased for you that you have then, certainly with the Jimmy Conner's show, found, and, you know, between Dungeons and Bastards and enlivening yourself, like, covering, oh, it's this, coming back and going, they're here and they love it. And then this is it happening.

Yeah. And the more importantly that you love it, that it's just fork, fork, fork the whole time, you know. Well, that's it. You trust your brain, you know, and I lost, it's so important that you trust your brain. It certainly is for me. Like, it's so important that the,

my instincts are all I've got. And they are, they are the only thing that I, that I have. They're the instincts that, that come up with an idea, that take that idea and shape it, and that then kind of come up with another idea.

And that, in that period that I've just spoken, about, not necessarily, well, yes, for the industry, but very much so for my family's situation, those instincts were called into question and the world didn't make sense. Now, there's a flip side to that as well, is that this, there is a, I cannot ignore that like Dungeons and bastards, a great, a great fun show, party show that represents a great flavor of what I can do, the ball and bow an absolute left field swing of the bat

that that's I mean I said I think in a review part of the joke is how left field this is part of the joke is how that doesn't fit at Edinburgh like why are you do

why on earth would you do that is part of the growth and I saw it in the grand Edinburgh and it was magnificent and it's a great yeah incredible achievement and it's a lovely

yeah that hitting that Yeah, that swing of the back, creating a home run for that. And then, and then, you know, the more the Jimmy Connest thing, like a play, straight play about something that I'm very, very interested in. There's a story that captured me at a certain point for lots of reasons to do with a lot of those family stuff that I was talking to about, to come off the back of three shows that all work, that all rewards the trust and the faith and the kind of, go on, just do it. just do it just like take out risk again well that's me that's me in the beginning that's me all the way through that's the DNA of me just just why wouldn't you you know I mentioned before about what's the best ending for this piece we'll write all 10 and just see which one's the thing like do it we're like find out give yourself more information on this to to help give your brain

more kind of room to make a decision on it like to have those three shows very very different came about in very, very different ways with all three with very, very different intentions, one of which working with someone else who is himself a very, very, you know, particular person, an individual person like I am, like for all the three of those to come off,

well, suddenly like, I trust my brain again and my instincts are there again. And so you can, and you can, you'll be amazed how much you can do if you fully trust your brain and how little everything else around it matters if your brain is being fed and your brain is being rewarded for feeding you and I think that that's something that like is a very, very nice feeling to have because

like I say, like I'm at that point where I'm writing three shows now, three shows again in three different directions. I'm not, I'm not represented. I still don't have an agent. No one is busting down the door to offer me this, that or that. But this is the way. This is This is my way and this is this is the way that it's unfolded. And it can always change and it can always take a, you know, a Mario speed bump to accelerate through into another gear and everything. But the, if you're not open to that, if your brain isn't alive to that and if your instincts aren't trusted enough to recognize that when it's being presented to you, well, then that can be the most, you know, solitary confinement you can you can find yourself in. And I think that that tale of pretty much from winning the award in 2011 to then going back and having that experience on stage with Dungeons and Basters in 2022, that 11 year period where all that family stuff happened, all that industry disillusionment, you know, came flooding in and polluting the waters. Well, it's, you know, it's taken, where are we now, like three, four years on from that to kind of like filter that and infiltrate that and just get it back to what the pure rest.

sense of what I love to do and what I, and what no one can stop me from doing either. That's, that's the fortunate position that that success has created, is that, like, as disillusioned as I could have been with that success and with those moments, well, they've also created a profile and an audience and an environment where I'm lucky enough to have people come and see what I do and take a risk with me. And, you know, that should never be, that should never be taken for granted, I think. It certainly isn't for me. To wrap up, this has been so brilliant, Adam. Thank you. It's been really great to meet you properly. It's been just fast. I absolutely loved talking.

Imagine if this was the first meeting, but if we met in a bar, I would have just done all of that for an hour and a half. Not let you speak. Next time we'll do me. We'll do me next time. Very Edinburgh. I will. I will feel personally slighted by my audience if they don't go all in. immediately buy tickets to the tour of Sean Bean. What's the Christmas show called?

The 12 Beans of Christmas. The 12 Beans of Christmas. And it's going to be on it throughout December. But just to ensure that every single one listening to this show also goes and buys tickets to your West End transfer of Jimmy Connors, it occurs to me if you haven't really told them what that show is and what it looks like. So feel free now, please, to pitch it such that people who are interested in would delight in the last couple of hours conversation, at which they're.

there will be many, will definitely immediately finish this episode and get on their phone and buy a ticket to the West End transfer. So tell me, yeah, I mean, it is, and tell me what the thing is, I didn't see it, and I regret not seeing it, I will try and kind of see it. It sounds an extraordinary kind of beat of solo show endurance theater, endurance for you, not for us, whilst being, you know, like we're having those things in common with coach and the, you know, I'm backstory and things like that. So just give us the elevator pitch for Jimmy Connick before we wrap up.

Well, I'll avoid the listings and the plug because then that does sound like the wrong tone for what we've been doing. We were talking about stuff. Allow me. You can pop that in. You can pop that in. I landed with five-star reviews. People absolutely lost their minds over it. And it's just such an incredible Edinburgh success story of bang, West End Transfer.

Everyone's got to see it. Yeah, it's a great. It's a show about Jimmy Conner's the tennis player. I was drawn to it because I was looking to do something else and find something else with my writing. I found the story as a documentary during lockdown. The story just grabbed me. I thought it could make a very good play, a one-person play. I started reading a bit more about him and that moment. And the things that I discovered really lent it to being that. And then it felt as well like the most natural thing, you know, like I've been saying with

different ideas, it felt like the most natural idea to do next. You know, you don't know why these ideas come to you and where they come to you, you can look back with hindsight and go, well, there's certain elements of that story that clearly chime with certain elements about where I was, where I am, getting older, you know, and that kind of thing. But, you know, how can I bury that personal, that personal expression and that personal kind of like work beneath a story that doesn't lead with that, you know, like stand-ups like yourself, like it's, very much an environment where it's front and center. You can talk about your life.

You can talk about your feelings. You can talk about different stuff like that. Well, you know, I've never looked to do that with character comedy, even though within some of those characters and some of that work, there has been obviously me working through different things and different therapies and whatever, you know, getting all that stuff done. Jimmy has that as well, but not in the way of a rollicking story. And it is a rollicking story.

And it's a show that was going to be a cast play. and then it felt better as a one-person show. It is funny, but it's definitely a theatre piece. And so it was a leap to put it into the theatre section and see what my comedy audiences would think when they came to see it and not be, you know, not necessarily be laughing, be the design of it. And suddenly the first three shows, it threw me

when the audience was silent watching it. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm dying. I'm actually dying. They're so bored. But no, in the world of theatre, that's a good thing. They listen really hard and then at the end they clap for ages, right? Yes, exactly.

And going back to that thing of like, I started writing plays, people would laugh. So I just switched with Tip X to it being a comedy by Adam Richards instead of a drama. Well, now they were quiet. I'd got better. So this show, yeah, and it's a real, yeah, I play tennis for an hour. He's an older man playing tennis. And I knew that I had to commit to it wholeheartedly. Not that I wouldn't anyway.

but the story revolves around a person of his age coming back and competing at the highest level and capturing everybody's imagination. But back then he was 39 doing it, which nowadays is not an old age to achieve that. Sports stars and athletes are operating, you know, older than that and achieving so much more. But back then, that was a big, big thing. And so I knew 10 years older than the character that I was playing that the only way I could make that something that would read in the room and make the audience feel that is if I did it, a non-athlete at 10 years older running around and they could see the physical toll that it would

take on my actual bodily, and that would be a character. The first time my sweat has been a character in the show. And to my delight, the audiences have really, really loved it. And it's captured a lot of people's imaginations. He's obviously opened up my stuff to a whole different type of audience member. I think a lot of comedy audience members delighted in the idea that they could actually sit and relax and watch a show for an hour

and not be bothered about being involved in it. But equally, like, it's so dynamic and so different to what, I suppose, how a lot of regular theatre is portrayed. The theatre audiences feel that they're watching, they can see that I've got a history and live comedy, you know, clearly, because there's a bombast to the performance.

But it's just been a delight. And, yeah, I mean, I could, like I said before, like I could talk about the making of shows, making ball and bow with John, making coach coach with Tage and Stevie and Dan Cook and everybody that was in that. I could talk about that for, you know, for days. Talking about stuff that's a bit more personal is a little bit more challenging for me. But that play sort of like I proudly kind of like feel and pride is not something I genuinely subscribe to. I don't really see it as a useful emotion in making stuff. But there is a nice sense of like symmetry between me making something that I struggled for ages to make that nobody was interested in seeing and nobody was interested in producing or helping make with me that I then just did on my own and then performed the hell out of it on stage on my own and it became successful because that perfectly matches with the story that the character is doing on stage. And in that quest to create that perfect bonding of audience experience, characters' experience, and actors' expression, trying to find that perfect kind of storm of that that happens like in that coach-coach moment, well, then this does it as well in a theatrical environment for me. Like I'm very much moving through the gears of a lot of things that I felt about myself, getting older, my family, the industry, competitiveness and all of that. stuff through the prism of this 70-year-old now sports star who actually has got in touch. Like, same as baller, but the amount of real people that are doing now.

I heard from John about them telling a log. It's ridiculous. I'm becoming like my spotlight page. It's got more famous people on it than me that I've played, obviously. Like, it's Sean Bean, it's just this list of real life people that I've played over the years. But yeah, so it's been a wonderful experience that, that again, like has, you know, a life beyond. I hope to write stuff that I can least run for 18 months, you know, in some kind of like live cycle. And with something like Ball and Bow, Dungeons and Bastards and Jimmy,

it feels like they are shows that can exceed that 18 months, you know, and beyond. And that's, that's, that's terrific because that's the, that's the apps going on in the background while I'm in the front working on some new stuff as well. And all of that's, all of that's great. But yeah, I would, yeah, I think it's a, if you'd like to come. Let me know. And I will send you the ticket link and you can book tickets. Thank you so much. I would love to and I will urge everyone else to go as well. We've come to the end. Thank you so much. This is just been a delight. And I feel very honoured and pleased that you listened to those episodes with those people

and found something useful in it. And I'm sure lots and lots and lots of people will find loads of interesting, useful stuff in this. Last question. Always a last question. are you happy am I happy with what with the recording are you happy we're still on it I thought you're just

happy with the recording this is the question this is the end of the interview Adam and the question can be interpreted however you like are you happy

am I happy well yes and no like I think that and that's what you should aim for I think yes because there's lots of stuff in my life

that I am very, very lucky and fortunate to feel now, no, because I want more and because I want to keep, you know, chasing for more. So that will always push me. If I, if I, if I, if I think back to a period that we've covered in lots of this, very, very difficult personal life, very, very difficult family life, very difficult, um, relationship with, say, my work in the industry, um, where we are now, um, very, very happy. with my relationship all my family are safe and healthy and uh and my ideas are still flowing and and and and happening so yeah i think i'm looking forward to that to those sadnesses that come inevitably with life but you but using them in the right way you know i think that's

that is something that i can take it we use the metaphor of like failure and and a bad gig to teach you lots of stuff like sadness teaches you lots of stuff as well like losing you know loved ones teaches you a lot of stuff as well gives you context gives you pause gives you know the ability to just look at at at the moment which is a very important thing to to embrace and maybe the hardest thing to embrace when you're making something and all the noise that surrounds it um but like i would say that you can't you can't not have that stuff without the other stuff like it all binds together and if your career if your life is making stuff that comes from within well then you're not going to evolve unless you actually have some of that that other kind of spice going on in there to

to flavor it all so yeah like yes and no to if I'm happy or not but absolutely fine with not being happy for periods because I know that like you just blink and you wake up and there's another record you can put on the turntable. So that was Adam. Don't miss the 12 Beans of Christmas on tour this December. I can't make his Bristol date and it breaks my heart because I would absolutely be there like a shot. He's touring all over the place. I can't imagine much more of a sort of wonderful, festive, stupid, hilarious thing to look forward to. So please, please, please get a ticket for that. and as well, apply yourself to Jimmy at the Park Theatre in London from the 19th to the 24th of January, 2026.

For more info on that, you can visit his Linktree, which is Linktree slash Adam Rich's Comedy, and go to his Instagram at Adam Rich's Comedy. And if you enjoyed this episode, you can get over 20 minutes, count them. We spoke for so long, it was great. 20 minutes of exclusive extras simply join the Insiders Club on Patreon. These are gold. They're really, really good. And this, so here's what is in Adam's one. We talk about him learning to shift gears for stand-up audiences with character comedy. We'll talk about his choice to seek his audience rather than conform to the mainstream. We will find it's a very, very funny story about an incredibly wild early, late night, early in his career, late night in Edinburgh, comedy spot involving him and his brother, and a sort of timing structure that Adam created in order to allow his act to remain free form. All of that good stuff only for the insiders on Patreon.

You can find out about that at patreon.com. That's what you do. You're at patreon slash. That would be insane. Patreon.com. com slash comcom pod. Find out everything you need to know about me at Stuartgoldsmith.com. And you can get extra comcom stuff on Instagram and TikTok at Comcompod.

And YouTube, simply search Comcompod. So thank you to our insider producers. Here we are. Here's the insider producers. Roger Spiller, Icave Dave, Daniel Powell, Keith Simmons. Or Simons, possibly, I've never known. Sam Allen, lovely Sam Allen, Jay Lucas, Gary McClett, there's nothing on these. I'm, I sort of tried to give you impression I had an index card for each one. Chris Swarbrick, Dave McCarroll, it can't be Powell, it has to be Paul Swaddle. Alex Werble and James Burry, and thank you to the two insider executive producers, Neil appearing on camera pieces, and Andrew hiding in the darkness, dead and to the super secret one as well. Also, I want to mention Mike Kaplan. You remember Mike Kaplan from the show, Mike M.Y.

he has a wonderful special which comes out on the 19th of November so it'll be out with the time you hear this have a look for that on his YouTube it's M-Y-Q K-A-P-L-A-N Mike Kaplan and it's called Rini and it's about his partner Rini and I saw it and it is hard to imagine

a more complex, complete and satisfying puzzle box of a comedy show I loved it to bits and if you're a big old comedy nerd you will too that's all from me thank you once again to Adam for coming on the show appreciate you very much. Thanks to Stevie Martin for technical support. Thank you to evil producer Callum. Also, Susie Lewis for The Logging and the music was by Rob Smouton. I am Stuart Goldsmith

and I will post-amble at you. If you're new to this, the post-amble is the bit where I sort of do what's going on in my life, but I do it after the show. So there's not to invade your privacy. I'm going to do that in a moment. But if you don't stick around for that, I understand. Who's got time for other humans? So in that case, I will simply bid you adieu and hope that you retain a consistent sense of self. Speak to you next time. So now this is, so what I've got to do now, this is this being the postamble is I have to do a live, not like a video postamble and then later today I've got to do the November stew and A, which is basically one of these on video anyway. And I'm completely fucking sick of talking about

myself. What can I tell you about? I went to Lyme Regis. This is, this is fun. I'm going to to read you, a text message exchange. Someone that works for my management, Katie, with whom I have a brilliant relationship. She's one of the most wonderful and consummate professional people I could hope to deal with, asked for my password for something. God, I was nearly about to read out my password in a WhatsApp exchange. And I said the password, and let's imagine it's like capital T, lowercase E, capital K, exclamation, and so on. And she said, thank you. And I said, I chose that password because it's my mother's maiden name. Separate message, which I feel is important. She's Dutch. So a lovely little joke there, and she replied with Take A Bow, which, given how busy she is, and she's one of the most fiercely busy and high-speed people I've ever met, if I ever get a little acknowledgement of a little joke from her, then I feel very pleased with myself indeed. I can tell you about Lyme Regis, which was real good. You know those rooms? I talked to Josie about this yesterday. Great episode coming up with Josie Locke. Let's focus on that. What was in the Adam Riches episode? I'm obviously recording this.

many weeks after, or many days at least after recording it, I loved the one with Adam. It was so good. Do you know what I'm going to do? And I'm normally a bit more organized than, no, I'm not, am I? I normally aspire to be more organized than this and never are. What I can do for this, why haven't I been doing this for the last 500 episodes? I'll just look back at the log from the episode, remind myself of the content, and then talk about it. Oh, that's any extras. I've got to keep that to myself. Dungeons and Bastards. He said, he started that show with no previews or rehearsals and from the very first moment it set fire and it carried me and it helped me find a different vein. It's so wonderful. Everyone was just in this brilliant, gamified environment. I couldn't believe he hadn't done it before and was throwing it together. And I was so proud that I was there for that was kind of first one and kind of clocked him and he clocked me in a sort of mutual nod kind of a way. I absolutely love. I have. I have. I have. I, I loved discovering that there's loads of Adam Riches as Sean Bean on Cats Does Countdown on YouTube. So please go and see that because that's not. I just don't watch any telly. I don't watch any comedy ephemera telly. I find it impossible to watch. Why? Why is that? Is it just because it's work? It feels like it's work. It feels like I have to have an opinion about it. So it's almost like I don't want to watch comedy in order to relax. It's not completely weird. It's understandable, I think. If I get taken to a show, like if I get, you know, if I'm going to go and

see something of an evening, what did I see recently? Went out and saw something. It's really funny. It'll come to me. When I, when I, um, go and see a thing, oh, do you know what I'm feeling now? Do you what I'm feeling now? The fact that these are being videoed makes me feel like I'm a YouTuber, but the fact that it's the nature of the post ramble is it's a complete fucking waffle with no structure and frequently no content. I'm suddenly seeing it like, oh no, now I'm a bad YouTuber. I'm a podcaster. Do you know when Traitors Uncloaked, which I've never watched, but then when we got into Traitors recently, the boy started getting very invested in Traders Uncloaked. I was trying to remind him that he once marched up the stairs in front of Ed Gamble, he was around

our house at the time. He said, Ed, you're coming with me. He said, what do you say? It was something like, I'm going to go upstairs and do a poo. Come on, Ed. And Ed was like, sure. And he marched naked up the stairs. He must have been like four. He marched naked up the stairs, farted on three steps, and then tear around and said, I just did three farts. It's hilarious because the boy doesn't remember that exchange. Why would he? And so it's very funny for him to be told that whilst enjoying the traitors uncloked. Oh, you've got something in relationship with Ed. That was an absolute joy to share with him. So, oh, and that reminds me, he would remember him because Ed and James, when they did celebrity hunted, I've told you about this before,

they did celebrity hunted and they got scooped up, me and the boy were on our way to a swimming lesson, and we scooped them up, they rang us, and we rang them back, and we ended up scooping them up and driving them to Swindon. And they taped all of this hilarious stuff. My son had just, he was off the, he must have been six at that point, because he, very different to the farting story, he must have been six because he was just off the back of a cracking performance at Camp Festival. when he'd done some stand-up. He was telling them all about that. And it was just, I was the proudest dad in the world, in the front seat driving while the camera crew next to me

were shooting Ed and James and my son. And he was just effortlessly being funny and, like, a naturally funny, witty kid, plus being a kid. And so it's funny when kids say, unthinking kid stuff. And then at the end, they got out and I said, have you got a final message for the boys? And he said, I have no faith in you whatsoever. And we were like, we fell about, we're like, this is brilliant. I mean, how can that not make the edit, right? And then none of it made it. So there we go. He says, it looks like my son is destined for a comedy career that reflects my own in the kind of successful failure quality that it has. Beautiful. I mentioned that because when I, I've never, having never watched Uncloat, it's very funny to watch Gamble come out at the

beginning and go, this is a visualised podcast. And you go, oh, so that's what this is. This is what I'm clear, this is what I'm clarifying this, although I'm doing this to video. And if you're a frequent post-amble audio person, do I sound different? I feel different and I don't much like it. Maybe it feels no different at all. I feel slightly more exposed, I feel

slightly more aware of how much faff it will be in the edit if I fuck something up and Callum's got to take it out because what if my arm's up here, then suddenly my arm's down here, nightmare. A little bit of physical comedy for you there. So I'm a bit more conscious, a bit more self-complish but I love the idea of Ed going, this is a visualised podcast, which is almost like saying

this has permission to not be as good as telly. So this is a visualised post-amble and as a result I am taking for myself. I'm stepping into my power and I am taking up space and I'm telling you that this is a visualised post-amble and not shit YouTube. Because otherwise I just see it in the context of like, you know, a proper interesting YouTuber like Hank Green or someone where you go, this is an interesting person who's thought hard about his content and is saying it in the most hooky, professional, profound kind of way that's full of retention loops that you can't look away from and he says something scripted and intelligent. This isn't that. So I'm going to say that I've enormously enjoyed my sweet Christ, I just saw the audacity. That's what I would normally record

the audio on. I've just seen that it isn't recording. So I've had a massive panic. But I believe I'm right in saying if I move that window down, I can see that it is actually recording on QuickTime. A fascinating glimpse there, as always, behind the wizard's cloth. It can't be the right word. It can't be, can it? What would a wizard have that you could look behind? Up the wizard's sleeve? I've had enough of this.

Goodbye forever. I'll speak to you soon. Bye.