Adam Riches first came to the Edinburgh Fringe with a two-man show called Plat Du Nuit: Comeback Special. As he makes his return to the festival for the first time, he ponders what's changed in the past two decades.

Has it changed for the better? That’s the real question.

It’s still a ridiculously expensive place to take a show. It still takes the most advantage of the most disadvantaged. It could never guarantee you success, but it does seem that there’s a lot more shows up there than there used to be. Does that make it harder for an unknown to stand out?

Online has changed the game so much that Edinburgh maybe isn’t the original birthing pool for talent it once used to be. Do acts even need it as much as they did before? A lot of performers doing their first hours seem to already have an agent, TV exposure and a London run under their belts.

That certainly wasn’t the case for me or my graduating year. We were absolutely out there on our own before anyone else took notice. Would some of us even have been found today? Would I?

How I approach the Fringe has certainly changed over time. Back when I first started I had no idea how hard it was to perform for a whole month. How hard it can be if your show is struggling. How much you can truly hate the one thing you’ve always wanted to do and how desperately moronic some people who work in this industry are.

I also didn’t know how good you could get performing for a whole month. How wonderful it can feel when your show is working. How deeper you can fall in love with the one thing you’ve always wanted to do and how genuinely supportive and inspiring some people who work in this industry are.

This is my first year back since social distancing, the ultimate in career cockblocking and I’m interested to discover if, as has been widely reported, audience behaviours have changed.

I do a lot of participation in my shows and for a while during Covid, it was technically illegal for me to be funny. With you anyway. On my own I’ve always been hilarious.

One of the last shows I did had me playing an emotional manipulator who emotionally manipulated women to get what he wanted. The whole show rested on the premise that no one would intervene in case they drew my unwanted attention over to them.

I did the same show at Vaults earlier this year and got called out after five minutes. Five minutes! I hadn’t even finished bowing by then. (Something I like to get out the way early doors to give all those who leave halfway through time to say thanks) I think this is a good thing. A shift in boundaries. Or at least the confidence in expressing them. It challenges me to evolve my creative thinking. 

So ask me again in September if anything has really changed. Ask me if audiences are still willing to trust a live performer in their natural habitat and give them a chance to surprise them.

Ask me if someone you’d never heard about has come up with a show so funny, you can’t wait to tell everyone you know about it.

Ask me if the Fringe can still do the one thing the Fringe has always done and offer a platform for someone to shine in spite of all the overwhelming odds.

• Adam Riches is The Guys Who... is on at Underbelly Cowgate at 14.10, while Dungeons 'n' Bastards: An Adam Riches Gameshow is on at Monkey Barrel at 22:40 from the 17th.