Harriet Dyer

Personal life Dyer was born and grew up in Truro, Cornwall. She was abused in her teenage years, which she touches upon in her later works and which led to addiction and mental health issues as an adult.

Dyer completed a BTEC in Performing Arts at Truro College in 2004 and went on to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Drama and Performance from the University of Wolverhampton in 2008. During university, Dyer suffered from alcoholism and almost dropped out. She later moved to Birmingham, and then Manchester She currently lives in Bristol, with a male partner.

Dyer has bipolar disorder.

Career Originally intent on becoming a nurse as a child,

While based in Manchester, she set up Barking Tales, described as "a night for comedians to speak candidly about mental health issues while still being funny". The idea for this came from her 2014 Fringe show, Barking at Aeroplanes.

Her other shows at the Edinburgh Fringe include What a Palaver! (2011 and 2012), Ain't it Awkward (2013), We'd Prefer Someone a Bit More Mainstream (2016), Dyergnosis Murder (2017), That's Not a Lizard, That's My Grandmother and The Dinosaur Show (both 2019), Trigger Warning (2022), Skin (2024), produced by Phil McIntyre Live. Her latest show is Easily Distra..., which debuted at the Fringe in summer 2025, and toured throughout autumn 2025. Trigger Warning won the Neurodiverse Review's inaugural Neurodiversity Representation Award. She released a version filmed in Bristol online in 2023.

She has appeared numerous times on television, on Live at the Apollo and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown (both in 2025), as well as The Russell Howard Hour, Rosie Jones' Disability Comedy Extravanganza, Comedy Central Live and Meet the Richardsons (for which she has also written). On radio, she has appeared on Elephant in the Room, The 13 Million Club (both BBC Radio 4), and The Good, The Bad & The Unexpected (BBC Radio Scotland).

In 2020, she released a book entitled Bipolar Comedian.