FOOTAGE has emerged this week of Mbah Gotho, the world’s oldest man, puffing on a cigarette in Indonesia at the incredible age of 145 years old.

Incredible, but his official identity card, which he holds for the camera in his gnarled fingers with his paper-thin skin revealing every sinew of his hand, says he was born on December 31, 1870.

So it must be true.

The poor fellow has outlived his four wives and ten children, and on Tuesday he told the Liputan 6 television news channel in Central Java: “What I want is to die.”

If his identity card is to be believed, Mr Gotho is much older than the verified oldest person in the world, Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 aged 122 years and 164 days.

However, beneath a large obelisk in a North Yorkshire churchyard lies the remains of a man to whom Mr Gotho and Mme Calment are mere whippersnappers. He was Henry Jenkins, and a marble monument inside the church proclaims: “He lived to the amazing age of 169 and was interred here, December 6, 1670.”

So it must be true.

By happy chance, you can inspect this claim today as St Mary’s Church at Bolton-on-Swale – about a quarter of a mile south of Scorton – is open from 10am to 4pm as part of the National Heritage Open Days, and it is promising “tea, coffee and cake”.

Henry Jenkins was born in 1500 in Ellerton-on-Swale, a pinprick of a place nearby which today has a nice farm restaurant. He was “of humble birth”, never learned to read or write, and worked most of his life as a salmon-fisherman in the Swale and as a thatcher. He put his longevity down to his simple diet of bread, cheese, raw onion and cold meat, and drinking plenty of nettle soup and tar water.

Tar water was made from a thick, sticky gloop extracted from pine wood. It was foul tasting, but apparently drove “strong spirits” from the body.

Plus, Henry always wore underwear made of flannel.

This made him into a remarkable physical specimen. Even when he was 100, he could easily swim across the Swale, even when it was in spate, and into his 168th year, his eyesight was so good, he could still tie fishing flies.

His memory was also very good, and he was regularly called to court to give evidence to help settle land ownership disputes. In 1620, he was a witness in the case at York, and the judge told him off for claiming to be 120 and for having a living memory of when the dispute arose. But Henry told him that at the time, he had been employed as a butler to Lord Conyers at Hornby Castle. The judge ordered proof, and an old register of Lord Conyers’ servants was uncovered in which appeared Henry’s name, just as he had said.

In a Chancery Court record of 1667, Henry stated on oath that he was "one hundreth fifty and seaven or theirabouts".

In the 1650s, Elizabeth Wastell lived in Bolton Old Hall, a 14th Century mansion in the shadow of the church to which it is said to be connected by a secret tunnel. Her sister, Ann Saville, visited and became intrigued by the aged creature who crept into the hall kitchen, begging to supplement his meagre income.

Ann was an educated lady, and at first, she treated his claims with scepticism. But as she delved into them, she found an element of truth in them.

She asked Henry what his first memory of a major event was, and he replied the Battle of Flodden, which had taken place in Northumberland on September 9, 1513. Henry claimed to have been between ten and 12. “I was sent to Northallerton with a horseload of arrows, but they sent a bigger boy from thence to the army with them,” Henry replied.

Ann asked him whether King Henry VIII had been present, and he replied: “No, he was in France, and the Earl of Surrey was general.”

She investigated, discovered that Henry had indeed been over the channel and that archers had been crucial in defeating the invading king of Scotland. Such corroboration was enough to convince her that Henry – who was born before parish registers became compulsory in 1538 – really was as old as he claimed.

When he died in December 1670, the register says that he was “a very aged and poor man” – too poor to be able to afford a headstone.

But the people of the Scorton area never forgot their supercentenarian, and in 1743, Dr Thomas Chapman, the Master of Magdalene College at Cambridge University, was involved in a fund-raising campaign to have him remembered. The campaign resulted in Henry’s grave being marked by the large obelisk, and Dr Chapman – born in Billingham and educated at Richmond Grammar School – composed the convoluted words for the large plaque inside St Mary’s.

They begin: “Blush not, marble, to rescue from oblivion the memory of Henry Jenkins, a person obscure in birth, but of a life truly memorable… blessed with a patriarch’s health and length of days…”

Mr Gotho, 145, has a long way to go beat our Henry, 169.