MEAT sellers are in every shopping street, but butchers are becoming a rare breed.

So says Cleobury Mortimer's cheerful High Street butcher of more than 30 years John Cope.

Mr Cope has good reason to be proud of the skills he acquired as an apprentice four decades ago and from long experience in business.

His shop window is cluttered with certificates and he has a pile of accolades kept less obtrusively at the back of the shop.

The latest batch is 10 mainly gold and silver awards for sausages and pies won just over a month ago in the Three Counties Awards For Excellence in Meat Production scheme.

Known as Jolly John Cope, he often treats customers to a few lines of song as he prepares the order. He enjoys an exchange of news and jokes as he serves.

The counter displays a variety of home-prepared products, ranging from elaborate latticed pies to an array of unusual sausages.

A glass cabinet contains a large selection of cheeses and there are shelves loaded with jars of jam.

Mr Cope lives in solid meat-eating country but admits to "harder times" since BSE. "Butchers can't live on meat alone. You have to keep up with the times," he says.

Aged 60 and with two daughters and five grandchildren all living in the area, Mr Cope loves Cleobury and his "olde worlde" shop nestled quaintly under the crooked steeple of St Mary's Church.

He is a keen freemason and a founder member of the chamber of trade but has never aspired to being a parish councillor: "There's no place for politics in a shop. It's better to be a diplomat!"

His trade may be in his genes.

Grandfather and father were both butchers. However, when he was a lad in Albrighton he had no experience of the trade. His father had given it up years since.

At the age of 15 he told his father his ambition. "It surprised him no end. He said, you can do anything as long as you do it properly, so I did a six years apprenticeship.

"I can buy from the farm, slaughter, cut up and prepare for the table. There are not many of us left," he points out.

Mr Cope once did everything but not since having an operation for cancer three years ago.

He still works 50 hours a week. "I cut it down from 70 but you have to be positive about your health," he says.

He has taken up wood turning as a hobby, and like everything else does it "properly". His wooden platters and bowls won him a top place among 65 entries last year in a Midlands exhibition.

The illness brought another big positive change. After 20 years without a holiday, he and his wife Valerie, who celebrate their ruby anniversary in June, now make it a rule to get away once a year.