Adam Riches mixed character comedy, anarchic stagecraft and a fearless level of audience engagement for latest show Bring Me the Head of Adam Riches. (Read our glowing review of the show.)

Characters included Ian Dustry the talent manager, Pedro the swingball star, O'Hara the monster hunter, the wheelchair-bound despot behind the board game Mastermind and Daniel Day-Lewis: “The most successful actor ever to appear in nobody’s favourite film.”

Adam told us of his win: “It feels terrific, absolutely brilliant. It feels like a terrific reward for a good long journey.”

He added: “This is my fifth solo show in a row, and they’ve all had various degrees of success and failure – personal, professional and emotional! – but this has hands down been the best, from the word go we hit the ground running and didn’t look back, so to end with this is a real full stop in it, it’s great.”

Of the large amount of audience participation, Adam explained: “That was key to it. I was very conscious of coming up and doing a show where we’d have the same script every day – and fatigue, lethargy and boredom might set in. So it was a very definite decision to involve the audience every day to keep it fresh for me and therefore fresh for the room.

“It’s like playing with a different cast every day, and that’s good fun. It’s risky, and it’s edgy in terms of ‘is this going to torpedo the whole show, but it’s terrific fun when they play along and get involved.”

The winners of the 31st Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Awards were announced yesterday at a ceremony at the Dovecot Studio, Edinburgh. Humphrey Ker won Best Newcomer (interview here) while Max and Ivan won the panel prize for their one-off comedy-wrestling spectacular (interview here).

The Awards were presented by last year’s Best Comedy Show winner Russell Kane and West End musical star and 2002 nominee, Omid Djalili.

Nica Burns, producer of the Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Awards, said: “It was aan extremely strong shortlist and a very hard decision.

“Congratulations to Adam Riches who is utterly original, extremely funny and a huge talent. He will no doubt be seen on your television screens in the near future.”