Jethro (comedian)

He was born in St Buryan, Cornwall, the son of a farmer, and after leaving school apprenticed as a carpenter and worked in the Levant tin mine. He joined the local operatic society in St Just, as a bass singer, and then started touring pubs and clubs in Cornwall, singing traditional songs and developing his comedy act. From 1967 he also played rugby as a prop forward in over 100 matches for Penzance & Newlyn RFC, which later became the Cornish Pirates. The name 'Jethro' came from his real name, Geoff Rowe, influenced by the character Jethro in The Beverly Hillbillies television show.[1][2][3]

After his popularity grew in Cornwall and Devon through the 1980s, he made his first national television performance in 1990 on the Des O'Connor Show, making several subsequent appearances. He also appeared on Jim Davidson's programmes, and on regional television, though much of his material was considered unsuitable for a television audience. He produced his first video, A Portion of Jethro, in 1993, followed by several others. He has also claimed that, during the height of his popularity, he sold some 250,000 theatre seats a year. In 2001, he appeared in a Royal Variety Performance.[1][3]

He has lived for some time at Lewdown, in Devon close to the Cornwall border, where he breeds horses and owned a comedy club which closed in 2012.[4][2] In 1995, he walked from Land's End to Lewdown and raised £20,000 for a cancer scanner appeal.[5] In February 2020 he announced that he was retiring from public performances at the end of the year.[3]

Jethro's standup act made use of his strong Cornish accent and rural style of dress, while the jokes he told made notable use of profanity and sexual anecdotes. A comedian of the old school like Bernard Manning, Jim Davidson and Roy Chubby Brown, he was sometimes criticised for racism, sexism and homophobia.[6] Richard Herring noted that Jethro's success over a long career was admirable, but also stated that "part of my admiration is that his stuff isn’t as horrible as that of some of his contemporaries. Which is a bit of a negative positive."[7]