Edinburgh Fringe: Jimmy Connors show is net gain for comedian Adam Riches

Comedian Adam Riches recalls his first Fringe with a smile. It was 1995 and his university came to the festival with a play.

“We were a little bit out of town and there were 40 shows on at our venue. I thought that was the entire Fringe,” he laughed. “It was only on the last day, when I came down to Princes Street to pick something up, that I saw this explosion of everything, and I thought, ‘Ohhh, so this is why it’s world-renowned’.

“The first time I took my own show was in 2003 and that was a disastrous year, a real baptism of fire. The sort of show that’s grown more popular for me started in 2007, so it’s been a large chunk of my life and it’s a place I have a lot of affection for.”

Adam even got married in the city a few years ago, to fellow comic Stevie Martin.

“We were doing a show together at the Fringe when we fell in love,” Adam explained. “We were struggling to find a place to get married because she doesn’t have anywhere she feels she has roots, and I moved around a lot when I was younger, so we were struggling to find a place of significance.

“We Googled ‘top 10 most beautiful registry offices in Britain’ and at the top was Edinburgh. As soon as we saw that, we thought, of course! That’s the one place that has significance for both of us.”

Adam also has family roots in Scotland. His mum was from Glasgow and he lived there when he was young.

“My dad was a restaurant manager for Berni Inns and he was posted to the Hope Street branch. I lived there until I was four or five and had a broad Glaswegian accent.”

Adam, who won the 2011 Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Comedy Show, has become well known for returning to the Fringe each year with a diverse variety of shows, such as murder-mystery The Beakington Town Hall Murders and Dungeons n’ B*****ds, a medieval flavoured game show presented by his parody of Sean Bean. This year is no different, as the sports fan brings a one-man play about US tennis legend Jimmy Connors to the festival.

“I came across a documentary about him during lockdown and it struck me as being like a sports movie,” Adam said. “When he came on the scene, he was this bullish kid who demolished the old guard; he was a tennis machine. No one liked him. Then other players, like McEnroe and Borg, came through, who were more beloved in a lot of ways.

“Then he came back in his middle era and won the majors again, and then in the ’90s, when the rest of that era was retired, he came back again and had this incredible run at the US Open, against players half his age. I wanted to explore how he had that longevity and what caused that fire inside him to burn like it did. And then I read about his mum and grandmother, (who coached and trained him) and I understood, and I knew that would make it a universal story and just not a niche sports story.

“We start with him in this match at the ’91 US Open and then we cover a lot of the earlier period of his career, and arrive back at the game, ready to see if he can turn the match around.”

Performing a physically exhausting show nearly every night for a month means Adam – whose wife also has a show at the Fringe this year called Clout – will have to look after himself while he is in Edinburgh.

“I’ve got to be on my best behaviour in terms of drinking, eating, sleeping, resting, warm-ups and warm-downs,” he added. “I might just be playing half a game against no one and on my own terms for an hour each night, but I get to pretend I’m a professional sportsman.”

Adam Riches: Jimmy, Summerhall – Tech Cube Zero, Aug 1-26 (except 12, 19) 9.30pm