Adam Riches

Adam Riches (born 29 March 1973) is an English comedian and actor who won the Foster's Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2011. Born in Cambridge, England, he was raised in Glasgow and London; his mother, a Scot, worked as a teacher in a daycare nursery, and his father was a restaurant manager at a Berni Inn in Glasgow. He attended Sutton Grammar School for Boys, and after a brief spell working as a waiter at Disneyland Paris, he studied Media and Performance at Salford University, performing his first Edinburgh Festival Fringe show in 2003. His performances often involve audience participation, including getting audience members to play swingball and race on skateboards.

After his success at the Edinburgh Fringe, Riches became familiar to UK television audiences through his exaggerated comic parody of actor Sean Bean on the panel show 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown between 2016 and 2020, where he appeared in Dictionary Corner entirely in character and was introduced as "Sean Bean." He played Tony in the first series of the BBC series Detectorists and appeared in the children's series Horrible Histories. The Adam Riches Experience toured the UK between April and July 2019.

His Edinburgh Fringe shows include Victor (2007), Alpha Males (2008), and Rogue Males (2009), which he regards as his best Fringe show. His Edinburgh Comedy Award-winning show Bring Me the Head of Adam Riches (2011) received five stars from The Daily Telegraph and The Independent and later transferred to the Soho Theatre in London. Later shows include Coach Coach (2015) and The Beakington Town Hall Murders (2019). As of 2012 he was living in Kew, London, with comedian Stevie Martin, whom he married in late 2022 in Edinburgh.