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The Scotsman
August 2007
Rating (out of 5): 
12% Evil: Laurence Clark
Laurence Clark is absolutely the best advert PowerPoint have ever had. His suggestions for the use of PowerPoint to settle domestic arguments are quite brilliant and irresistibly funny. He is also slowly but surely bringing McDonalds to its financial knees with a fiendish plan involving straws and disabled toilets. Clark has really hit his stride this year with a show that is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. I can't think of another comic here who provokes so much thought and so much laughter at one and the same time. As a performer, Clark is the best he has ever been. He seems relaxed and confident. He has the same kind of warmth and likeability that Adam Hills has. But now he can really use it. His topic this year is the cliche, the received 'wisdom' that surrounds disability. And he deals with it so smartly he should be made compulsory viewing.
Using Bond Villains, Pirates and the bible (statistically God hates cripples more than prostitutes and sodomites, apparently) he illustrates how the disabled have been portrayed as evil. And yes, Clark does address the Heather Mills McCartney question. With reference to Yoda, Heidi and Andy Pipkin he explores the suspicion that they are fakes. Watching Clark hurl insults at a screen filled with Hollywood's Oscar Winning finest is absolutely hilarious. Did you know that one third of all Oscar winners have got the prize for pretending to be disabled ?
The hidden camera film he made to illustrate the way the disabled become invisible is funny and revealing, but the glorious, escalatingly ridiculous exposure of the public's kneejerk pitying reaction to a bloke in a wheelchair with a collecting bucket should get him a TV deal.
