Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

It's an occupational hazard for a stand-up not to be taken seriously, especially when their instinct is to joke about even the darkest aspects of their life.

And as Harriet Dyer points out at the top of her show, if she's known for anything in comedy, it's her mental health problems. She can't have ADHD because she's got everything else. Even if her initial failure to stay on script, constantly and amusingly admonishing herself, might suggest otherwise.

But when she's tried to talk about the terrible secret that's dogged her for the last 26 years, at least one person in the comedy industry has sought to shut her down, portraying her as an aggressor for inconsiderately triggering others.

Never mind that she did no such thing. Dyer is taking no chances with this hour, her show title serving as apt warning. Because, make no mistake, this is no would-be edgy dispatch from the so-called culture wars; it's a survivor's account of abuse, neglect and victim-blaming, a terrible indictment of the police and education sector's failure to protect or even listen to her.

But it also partly serves as her comedian origin story. Dyer had already started stand-up when the abuse violently resumed in 2014 after a period of relative stability in her life. Although she makes no explicit connection, the opportunity to be heard, to share her story, however edited or obliquely, was doubtless a factor in her taking the stage.

Brought up poor in Cornwall by a loving family, albeit one with some real dysfunction and an existing big secret of its own, Dyer had a dangerous paper round on a tough estate at 12 years old. She paints a vivid, drolly bemused picture of the deprivation there and her chaotic place in the community, her mother's eccentric advice for pacifying an aggressive dog inspiring an incident that would have significant impact on neighbouring twins who went on to become celebrities.

Running a little wild, by her own admission she saw too much, too young of sex, and started acting inappropriately. Attention-seeking, surely, but unquestionably one of the first red flags that ought to have been noticed. And in a vulnerable situation, she was exploited. Even as the abuse began, though, Dyer's playful nature and recourse to humour found her struggling to comprehend the reality of it.

With the benefit of hindsight and a happy, if still slightly chaotic domestic life now, she can be perceptive and finds some wryly funny elements in her subsequent issues with sex, depression, drink and drugs. 

Whether through the way her brain works or the steps it took to process her trauma, Dyer has evolved an off-kilter way of looking at the world and acceptance of its more bizarre aspects. Much of Trigger Warning is heartbreaking and sobering. But she makes it more than a negative case study, her astute humour elevating it to anecdotal art that humanises the horror and is all the more affecting for it.

• Harriet Dyer: Trigger Warning is on at the Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose at 4.20pm

Review date: 12 Aug 2022
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson