From bad ideas to big ideas Dave O'Neil A thoroughly likeable comedian, Dave O'Neil delivers an entertaining hour of chuckles and self-deprecating humour in 33 Things I Should Have Said No To. The show is a journey through some of O'Neil's poor life choices, and he rings a bell and gets an audience member to rip a piece of paper off a flip book to mark each "Thing." School days, dodgy first jobs, run-ins with bogans and parenting are some of the topics the Melbourne comedian cracks gags about. As the show goes on, the bell-ringing becomes more like a device to mark every second or third joke, particularly ones involving "bad taste" (priests, Scouts, etc). The thing about O'Neil though is that he's too sweet to ever really offend; his is a more "aw shucks, shouldn't have said that" style that keeps the audience giggling along. His best stories are more recent professional engagements that ended in disaster and/or involved public nudity, and I would have enjoyed hearing more of those rather than O'Neil making cracks about his weight. If you enjoy comedy by numbers, check out 33 Things I Should Have Said No To, playing at the Brisbane Comedy Festival until Saturday March 9. Fans of the TV show Deadwood will remember how the western seamlessly combined beautiful and lofty prose with brutal, earthy swearing. Steve Hughes is like a one-man Deadwood: not afraid to challenge his audience with sophisticated concepts and intelligent wordplay, but also extremely comfortable dropping four-letter words when it's the simplest and clearest way of making a point. He doesn't so much call a spade a spade as call a spade a c---. A heavy-metal disciple, conspiracy theorist and beer-skolling philosopher, Hughes has a softly spoken style that demands an audience's participation. He rails against nanny-state bureaucracy and encroachments on personal freedoms - everything from not being able to open your hotel room window to the impending establishment of a global police state. His take on what it means to cause offence and be offended should be mandatory viewing for internet bloggers, haters, trollers and tweeters. Hughes' paranoia does tend towards the extreme, but for the most part this is comedy that soars beyond set-up/punchline (even though Hughes is a dab hand at that). See Steve Hughes if you're interested in big ideas with your big laughs. Big Issues plays at the Brisbane Powerhouse until Sunday March 10.