THE mother of Britain's favourite comedienne looks set to make a name for herself - more than four years after her death.

Nellie Mape, mother of Bury comic Victoria Wood, spent much of her life writing diaries.

Her husband Stanley, an author, always promised to put these together as a book, but he died in 1993.

Their children - Chris, Penny, Rosalind and Victoria - found the documents after Nellie's death in 2001, and Chris, the eldest, decided to tell the story of his mother's early life in extreme poverty.

"My mother was a real hoarder," Chris said. "When she died we found boxes and boxes full of manuscripts and documents. I started reading through them all - it was a tremendous revelation. I know my parents better now than I ever did before.

"There were so many documents that it took about two years to get through them all."

Nellie was born in 1919 and brought up in the Bradford district of east Manchester, now known as Eastlands.

One of six children, she was cared for by her father, who had been injured during the First World War, while her mother worked in a cotton mill. "The family lived in real poverty," said Chris. "My mother said she was often hungry and had to get food wherever she could."

Nellie left school aged 14 to start working at the local steelworks, and it was at this time that she became politically active.

She was an ardent teetotaller, and became an active member of the Young Communists.

Nellie married Stanley Wood in 1940. The couple moved to Bury after the Second World War when Stanley found a job as an agent for the Bury and Radcliffe division of the Liberal Party.

Three of their children, including Victoria, attended Bury Grammar School.

They lived in Walshaw, Tottington and Birtle until Stanley's death in 1993, when Nellie moved to Yorkshire.

"After bringing up her children, she went back to college and got a Masters degree at Manchester University," Chris said. "She eventually became a college lecturer at what was Bolton Technical College."

Father-of-three Chris now lives in County Durham with his wife, Frances, and works as a local councillor, journalist and author.

Although Chris did most of the work on the book, Victoria wrote the foreword.

"Victoria is an absolute genius," Chris said. "If it wasn't for her, it's unlikely the book would have been published, because no-one would be interested in reading it.

"There's a lot of my mother in Victoria, and I think people will see that in the book. She's very determined and driven, and I really admire her for that."

l Nellie's Book: The Early Life of Victoria Wood's Mother, by Chris Foote Wood, goes on sale on February 16.