Darrel Bristow-Bovey was born in Durban, South Africa, in the 1970s. He studied at the University of Cape Town under JM Coetzee and Andre P. Brink and worked for three years as editor of children's fiction at a publishing house in Cape Town.
He moved to Johannesburg in 1997, where he became television columnist for The Sunday Independent , and a popular columnist in a range of publications and on the radio. He has won four Mondi Awards for Best South African Columnist, and has published four books: two books of humour, titled I Moved Your Cheese (2001) – which was translated into four languages - and The Naked Bachelor (2002); a collection of his columns titled But I Digress (2003), and his first book for younger readers, SuperZero (2006), which won a 2006 Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature.
He currently writes for television, having been head writer on the first three series of the popular South African drama series, Hard Copy .