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COMEDIAN Doug Stanhope’s letters to his Death Row pen pal helped him to write a book about his relationship with his late mother Bonnie.

The American stand-up, who is known for his abrasive and potentially offensive material, will publish One Funny Mother: A Memoir next April.

Doug admits he needed help from friends, colleagues and acquaintances to help him recollect the facts.

The 48-year-old said: “I haven’t followed anything that has gone on outside my front door for the last six months because I have been working on that book.

“It’s about my life with her and how she influenced my comedy and what a train wreck she was, sometimes in a good way.

“The whole thing was a difficult process.

“First of all, my memory is so bad, I had to check with everybody the timelines and when and how all of that happened.

“I had a Death Row inmate pen pal who I wrote to for several years and early on in my correspondence, I asked him to keep my letters and send them back to me as a de facto diary.

“Those things are priceless having been doing stand-up for over 25 years, which is constant road work.”

Doug has been compared with the late Bill Hicks and Lenny Bruce and his book will recount how his mum influenced his comedy.

He said: “She allowed me to be an adult far younger than any other parent would.

“She was vulgar and crass and that was our sense of humour.

“I was doing what I’m known for now when I was 11 years old and being sent to a psychologist by the school for the same things we laughed at over the breakfast table.

“Despite outbursts of a sexual and violent nature, she had my back.

“We had to go to a psychologist a couple of times. We’d make jokes in front of him.

“I’d ask, ‘Mum, do we have to have our beatings tonight?’

“She’d have to explain to him that this was our sense of humour but he wasn’t buying it.

“He thought we had things we had to work through.”

Doug is back in the UK for the first time in three years. He performs at Glasgow’s O2 Academy tonight and tomorrow.

The comic has no plans to tone down or change the material for his British audiences.

Doug added: “Those people (who are easily offended) don’t come to my show.

“I’m not on television, so they can’t boycott sponsors.

“To generalise, it’s usually someone’s girlfriend. I don’t have to deal with it. I’m not going home with them but I get the occasional tweet that someone’s wife hates my guts or wants to leave him because of it.”