Wendy Harmer

Wendy Gai Harmer (born 10 October 1955) is an Australian author, children's writer, journalist, playwright, dramatist, radio show host, comedian, and television personality. Born Wendy Brown in Yarram, the daughter of a teacher, she grew up in small country towns in Victoria as well as the city of Geelong, where she studied journalism at the Gordon Institute of TAFE and Deakin University, and became a reporter at the Geelong Advertiser. Her journalistic career took her to Melbourne, where she worked for The Sun News-Pictorial.

While working as a feature writer, Harmer was introduced to a comedy group performing at the Flying Trapeze comedy venue, and she began performing as a stand-up comedian on her days off. She is acknowledged as the first Australian woman to enter the all-male domain of stand-up comedy in the 2015 ABC TV series Stop Laughing...This Is Serious. She was headlining her own shows at the Last Laugh theatre restaurant and was on the board of the first Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 1987. Her television work includes The Gillies Report, hosting ABC TV's The Big Gig, and her own talk series In Harmer's Way. She performed at the Edinburgh Festival on four occasions, including her one-woman show Love Gone Wrong, which was awarded "Pick of the Fringe".

On radio, Harmer started at 3AK in the mid 1980s, hosted Kaboom on Radio National in 1992, and in 1993 joined 2Day FM, co-hosting the highly rated breakfast radio show The Morning Crew for 11 years. In 2016, she returned to radio, presenting the morning program on ABC Radio Sydney alongside Robbie Buck. She is the author of seven books for adults, including It's a Joke, Joyce (1989) and Farewell My Ovaries (2005), and has written a series of children's books called the Pearlie the Park Fairy. She also founded the website The Hoopla.