Ian Billings was one of the writers behind Chucklevision. Sneer if you want. Chucklevision's been running since 1987 and it wouldn’t be if Billings didn’t know what he was doing: he makes kids laugh. His show Dumbs Up! wisely does the same thing; I suppose making kids cry doesn’t pay the bills.Bouncing onto stage, belaying his middle-age, Billings launches into his high-octane silly patter for half an hour before slapping his cartoonist and poet friend Chris White onto the stage for 20 further minutes of hijinks before finishing the gig off himself.As a parent, expect to groan. Billings is groansome, but his audience isn’t you, it’s the little ones you’ve brought and they lap it up. Billings relies on puns and silliness for his laughs, but also attacks his stand-up from the level of the child: he’s their articulation of the absurdities children have to face from parents, teachers and bullies every day. His partner in crime, Chris White, relies more on audience participation (i.e. shouting and clapping) in his act, making his poems less like staid story-time and more like a cartoon rock gig for the under 12s.Billings and White have an impressive hit rate, scoring laughs across the age range they had on the day, with little material falling flat. The only time the audiences valuable patience was stretched was Billing’s return to the stage, where his ’Ultimate Family Movie’ parody misjudged the age of his audience a little, scrabbling at film references a bit beyond the soon blank faces in front of him. Some final madness saved the act, but was a terse reminder that kids can be just as hard an audience for a stand-up to crack. Unless your precious issue have been exclusively brought up on free-range Stewart Lee and Fairrade Rich Hall for fear of impure comics, Billings is a great introduction to the genre.
