A controversial American comedian has told how he stopped a man from throwing himself off a bridge in Edinburgh.

Doug Stanhope had just finished a gig in the city and was having a drink in the bar of the Scotsman Hotel when he and other passersby intervened as a man tried to jump off the North Bridge.

Speaking exclusively to The Herald, the comic, who has admitted assisting his seriously ill mother to take her own life and now uses the incident in his stand-up routine, said he felt like “a hero”.

“I was having a cigarette outside the hotel when I saw a woman chasing a man down the street, shouting ‘Angus, sit down!’. They were both very drunk and it was a bit like a Fringe show.

“But then the guy started trying to climb up on the bridge and I thought I’d better get over there.”

Stanhope, 48, and two other men restrained the man until police came.

“He was pretty riled up, especially when we held him down on the ground. It was like trying to stop a toddler from running up an escalator. If we hadn’t held him down, I’m pretty sure he would have jumped.”

Stanhope, who is playing shows at the O2 Academy in Glasgow this weekend, posted a picture of the incident on Twitter as it unfolded in the early hours of Friday morning.

The photograph appears to show a man being restrained on the North Bridge.

The tweet says: “Hey Angus, I wish you could’ve saved me from my set last night the same way we stopped you jumping off the bridge.”

Asked about the fact that suicide was a regular part of his comedy routine, Stanhope said he could “see the irony”.

He said: “I have friends, family and fans who have killed themselves. This guy had no idea who I was, of course. I said to him I knew how he felt – I’d just been talking about suicide at my show.

“I was pretty drunk too, but not as drunk as Angus. That’s how it goes – the less drunk guy always has to help the more drunk guy.”

Asked what he would say to “Angus” following the incident, Stanhope said he expected "a big thank you".

“I expect to receive some huge reward, the keys of the city and to appear on the Scottish version of Oprah alongside Angus,” he joked.

“Of course, I feel like a hero. A few weeks ago someone left shopping list they’d written on the back of their phone bill in a shopping cart in the supermarket. I dropped that in her mailbox – heroism is a part of my life.”

In 2008, Stanhope's 63-year-old mother Bonnie, who suffered from emphysema, killed herself with a heavy cocktail of Black Russians and prescription morphine.

Stanhope was present at her death, turning what could have been a sombre event into a comedy roast and film night. The incident makes up a substantial part of the routine in his most recent DVD, Beer Hall Putsch.

In an interview with The Herald earlier this month, the comedian defended the support he gave his mother to die and his use of the event as comedy material.

“I can’t think of a better way to go out than with cocktails and jokes," he said. “I wouldn’t want a bunch of weepy relatives sitting around crying and holding my hand in a hospital room waiting for the inevitable without knowing when it’s going to happen.

"It was difficult to make that routine work; not from any point of view of it being painful for me, it was just a matter of making it funny so that it doesn’t outright depress people. It was all about getting it to a format where it was stage-friendly.”