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(announcer) Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage,
back from his recent inspiring Mount Everest expedition,
it's Laurence Clark!
(man) Whoo!
Well, the Unlimited programme's had a massive impact on my work.
For the first time I've had a decent budget
to actually realise what I wanted.
Yeah. Late last year, when someone got in touch with me over Twitter...
(man) "So excited to see and meet Laurence Clark! #inspirational"
Being called inspirational is, like, my number-one pet hate in life.
You may be thinking, "What's your problem, Laurence?"
A word that's lost a lot of its meaning
because we kind of use it in a very general way now
to describe seemingly anything to do with disabled people.
(woman on screen) She was so inspirational.
(laughter)
When I saw that "inspiration" was one of the themes
and the strands of Unlimited,
I couldn't resist saying, "Well, I'll do a show about that,
but look at it in different ways."
I did various videoed sketches,
some more elaborate than others.
Some are just me on the street,
but the one involving Paralympic runners at the racetrack
is probably the most elaborate thing I've ever done,
and the most complex thing.
(commentator) And Clark gets it!
Oh, and the crowd goes absolutely wild here at the Paralympics
as Clark himself celebrates there with a trademark pint of Flowers.
Inspirational!
Well, I owe DaDaFest my career,
because it gave me the first opportunities
to try out doing stand-up comedy.
As well as doing Edinburgh, and the awards,
and getting the good reviews,
I was able to capitalise on the publicity that I had,
and make that work for me
and make that work in terms of getting bums on seats.
I like the way it challenges us, as able-bodied people,
to look at the attitudes we might have grown up with,
and yet he makes us laugh with him, you know, so...
He gets the message across
in a way much better than any kind of lecture or conference can do.
Comedy's a great medium.
(Laurence) Yes! I'm bungee jumping!
Or, as I like to call it, falling.
And the show came runner-up in the Amused Moose Laughter Awards,
for best Edinburgh comedy show.
So it did well critically,
it got four-star reviews,
so it's led to other things as well.
I've been Laurence Clark.
So have they. Thanks for coming.
Good night.
(cheering and applause)
Captions by internetsubtitling.com