Little Howard's Big Show For Kids brings to the live stage a comedy double act which has now endured for nearly 10 years. Comprising of the grown-up and real-life Big Howard and the 6-year-old cartoon big-screen-projected Little Howard, this children's entertainment tour-de-force shot to prominence after their appearance at the 2007 Royal Variety Performance. Following this, and many great and popular live touring shows such as Little Howard and The Magical Pencil of Life and Death, an award-winning CBBC series Little Howard's Big Question marks their biggest achievement to date. Although the use of the word "their" in this instance is somewhat misleading, as this is all down to the singular penmanship of Howard Read. His writing and artistic design are the makings of this show.

The show I saw at the Pegasus Theatre was like nothing I have seen before in terms of children's entertainment. The simple yet brilliantly effective idea of Big Howard peeking around the side of the set to sketch members of the audience on a tablet which projects the results up onto the big screen as they enter before the start of the show is both hilarious and is a superior replacement to actors aimlessly "interacting" with the audience at the start of the show as is the usual default of all children's theatre. Similarly the child participation, another clunky yet never-ceasing facet of the genre, is brilliantly altered here to entirely revolve around touch-screen technology thus playing to playing to the modern child's strength of instant understanding of technology.

In fact, one of the best things this show does is play with your preconceptions of children's theatre. This amazing rewriting of the "he's behind you" gag, for example: "unfortunately I cannot look behind me because, as you all know, I am two-dimensional". Also, after I had stopped giggling with delight at the jokes about (among other things) poo, transvestites, arts council funding, 1970s Top of The Pops dancers and Michael Jackson lyrics; I kept thinking "and you're doing this in a kids' show!?" But the writing deals with all these subjects with such dexterous grace and balance that it all adds to the brilliantly refreshing and unpatronising tone of the show.

Some mistimed tech cues aside, "Little Howard's Big Show for Kids" is a joyous and celebratory way to spend an hour. At the end of it all my face ached from smiling and my belly hurt from all the laughing. There is so much here for folks both big and little to savour. As Little Howard says "Prepare to be amazed, amused...and...err...amazed again".