Stand Up For Kids boasts a varying line up of several of the festival’s local and international comedians, the ‘Little Big Show’ if you like – one hour long, four acts, with Jamie Bowen revving it up as MC.

Bowen is great at getting the kids involved and hyped up – bouncing around and shrieking like a maniac kid himself. He starts it off with a demo of dances he made up, e.g. the ‘driving a car’ dance, and works in some audience participation – giving a few kids the chance to come up and show us their most spectacular dance moves. He also does a commendable impression of Donald Duck as hiphop DJ, beatboxing and playing the ukelele.

Al Pitcher already has the boundless energy of a children’s entertainer when he’s entertaining adults, so he doesn’t have to do much adapting. In fact, having already reviewed three out of the four acts in the first show I see they have simply taken material straight out of their one-hour evening sets (which works well for the most part), though Pitcher adds a couple of new bits about giggling at other people’s misfortune and cruelty to kittens, throwing in his disclaimer not to try this at home, "I’m really terrible" – actually he’s not, he’s a big softie.

Paul Tonkinson is great with the facial contortions and silly walks, but he talks fast in his Yorkshire accent and moves from one idea to the next very quickly, which can be difficult for younger ones to follow. He has some funny material about his own kids and how they’re constantly outsmarting him – though this is aimed just as much at the parents as the children in the audience – and stories from his school days about the pain he and his peers used to inflict on each other in the name of mirth.

I took my almost-6-year-old, who said he was ‘bored’ because he didn’t get to do a dance and get a prize, but liked the bits where he got to parley with the comics (ego-centric, yes, but an unusually polite heckler, raising his hand and waiting to be noticed, which worked in his favour). Although the programme says ‘all [Kids’ Comedy Season] shows suitable for 6-12 year olds but great for everyone’, I’d say the stand up is best suited to age 7 or 8 upwards.

Mike Boon’s piece is a story about Princess Isabella, a dissatisfied princess whose father decides she needs to be married off and invites a bunch of suitors over. He uses an array of silly hats and voices, reminiscent of Spike Milligan. I’m glad they dragged him out of comedy retirement to do the show (he’s now a teacher) because his satirical storytelling got my boy out of his slump of self-pity, and laughing again.

James Nokise, with his upbeat, casual approach gets the kids onside no sweat. He involves them by directing plenty of questions at the audience and checking in with the kids to make sure they’re following his monologue – getting some pretty funny/cute responses from eager children.

Don’t worry, they don’t pick on the mums and dads… much. The changing line up will also feature Dave Wiggins (NZ), Janey Godley (Scotland) and more.

If you’re interested in other kids’ entertainment in the Comedy Festival, check out Little Howard and the Magic Pencil of Life and Death, on until Sunday and Men of Steel, on next week. 

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