This farmer's son was born in 1948 in the village of St Buryan, West Cornwall. After leaving school he worked as a carpenter and after his apprenticeship went to work in a tin mine.

Jethro started in show business singing traditional songs in Cornish pubs. At the age of 18, he joined a local operatic society. But he discovered he could get laughs, too, and so became a comic.

Although rarely seen on TV, he sells more than 250,000 theatre seats a year and does a roaring trade on video.

His few small-screen outings include The Des O'Connor Show, where he appeared a record nine times, and five appearances on Jim Davidson’s Generation Game, twice to make a Cornish Pasty.

He has hosted two shows for West Country ITV station HTV, The Jethro Junction, and in December 2001 appeared in the Royal Variety show in front of the Queen.

Jethro lives in Lewdown on the Devon/Cornwall border. His passions are his show horses, golf, and rugby, having played prop-forward for Penzance and Newlyn for ten years from 1967.

In 1993 Jethro released his first video A Portion of Jethro, which sold nearly 150,000 copies, a success which he has followed up with another nine titles.