For more than five-and-a-half years Anthony Bradshaw said he was so disabled he could hardly walk and needed help with everyday tasks. But he was actually employed several nights a week at a Manchester pub and also entertained at other functions, and was regularly seen singing and dancing.

And throughout that time, 46-year-old Bradshaw was claiming Disability Living Allowance and incapacity benefit and by the time the fraud came to light he had cheated the state out of £70,336.

Department of Work and Pensions officers became suspicious about his claim and secretly filmed him carrying heavy equipment into and out of venues, walking up and down stairs and standing for long periods.

Working under the stage name of Tony Delaney he "was even seen to sing and dance which he did without any apparent difficulty," said Stephen McNally, prosecuting.

Jailing church-goer Bradshaw, of Belmont Road, Hindley, for 12 months Judge David Aubrey, QC, said, "This was a prolonged, systematic and deliberately course of fraud. You were thoroughly dishonest on a prolonged and large scale.

"To put it bluntly you were on the fiddle for many, many a year," he said.

"You were seen working, dancing, drinking, enjoying yourself and certainly on the occasions that you were subject to surveillance it seems the descriptions in the medical reports were not presenting themselves.

"The message must go out that to those who commit fraud that when they are caught, if it is on the scale you were perpetrating, an immediate custodial sentence is the inevitable consequence," said Judge Aubrey.

Bradshaw pleaded guilty to three offences of failing to notify a change in circumstances and two of false representation. The offences involve DLA, incapacity benefit, housing and council tax benefit.