Laurence Clark: my life as a superhero

Comedian Laurence Clark has cerebral palsy, uses a wheelchair and is tired of being told he is 'inspiring'. Here he explains how he raised funds for puppy-cide, and why not every Paralympian is a winner
Lawrence Clark
'I am bemused by the way people react to me' ... Lawrence Clark. Photograph: Katherine Rose

Ten years ago I was a wannabe comedy writer, sending off unsolicited scripts to places like the BBC to no avail. I loved standup, but couldn't see how someone like me could make it work. Then I saw a Dave Gorman show, and was completely blown away. Gorman used slides, video, sound clips; it made me realise that standup doesn't have to be one person talking for an hour. I started to develop my own act, using anything I could lay my hands on.

But the comedy circuit can be a daunting prospect for a wheelchair user (I was born with cerebral palsy). The majority of clubs tend to be above or below pubs, accessible only via long flights of stairs. Even if I can get in, there are often more steps to get on to the stage. So fairly early on in my standup career, I decided to focus on the Edinburgh fringe, where I found both a few accessible venues and, to my joy, some critical acclaim.

I have long been bemused by the way people react to me – a quirk of human nature I want to share through my act. As well as traditional standup, this uses multimedia and hidden cameras to take the audience into a world they might not otherwise experience. In my favourite stunt, I spent a day filming around London with a collection bucket: what would be the most ludicrous fake charitable cause that someone like me could get money for, purely as a consequence of how the British public viewed me? I planted myself on street corners and shook my bucket, advertising causes that grew more and more absurd. My first bucket read "Pay off my mortgage", then it was on to "This is a scam", and later, my favourite charity: "Kill the puppies". And people donated, generously. Even when I begged people not to, they kept giving. I recently performed this sketch at a festival, and rather loved the fact that it inspired a group of kids to go around chanting "kill the puppies" for the rest of the day.

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Earlier this year the BBC screened a documentary about me and my wife, who also has cerebral palsy, called We Won't Drop the Baby, focusing on the birth of our second child. We were swamped with tweets, Facebook messages and even had strangers stopping us in the street, all wanting to tell us how inspirational we are. You may well be wondering: what would be my problem with this? After all, there are far, far worse things I could get called. But I came to realise that the less fortunate you are perceived to be, the less you have to achieve before you're labelled "inspiring". It was a polite way of people telling me they thought I probably wouldn't amount to much, but had somehow surpassed their low expectations.

Commissioned to produce a new show by the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, I decided to look at inspiration and disability as a theme. For instance: I'd place a bet that if our Paralympic football team loses in the first round, they will still be described as "inspirational"; if the regular England team had done the same at Euro 2012 they would be called a bunch of bastards. I don't get called inspiring for achieving amazing feats, the kind of thing anybody would be in awe of, like swimming the Channel, climbing a mountain or getting away with saying the F-word on Newsnight (I have done one of these things: no prizes for guessing which). Instead, people tell me I am inspiring for doing ordinary, run-of-the-mill things like getting dressed and going to work. I was told I was inspiring when I got married, presumably because people like me aren't expected to find love. I was told I was inspiring when my sons were born, though my contribution seemed like the easy bit compared to my wife's.

When you watch the Paralympics on Channel 4 over the next couple of weeks, count how many times athletes are described as inspirational. It's as if we have no other frame of reference. What about those athletes who come last? Or the ones who didn't qualify in the first place? Surely they can't all be inspiring? It's a bizarre form of political correctness. The mainstream media portrays disabled people as either inspirational or benefit scroungers; the middle ground that most of us occupy seems to have vanished.

My new show is an attempt to reclaim the word, to use it when we're inspired by someone with similar personal circumstances who has accomplished great things, or for someone we really connect with, whose achievement is also our goal. In a month of performing on the Edinburgh fringe, I have achieved things I wouldn't mind being considered inspiring; I am a proud runner-up in the Amused Moose Laughter Awards. If this inspires a young comic, that would be brilliant: after all, I wouldn't be doing what I do today had I not been inspired by Dave Gorman's show. But it's time being inspirational really meant something.

Inspired is at at Liverpool's DADAfest on 31 August, then Bloomsbury theatre, London on 7 September. Details:

This article was amended on 27 August 2012. In the original, the word fine was used instead of time. This has been corrected, as has the mispelling of the name in the caption.