His trademark rubber-neck dance, skeletal frame and peculiar speech impediment made him a formidable and funny comedian and pantomime dame.

His father George Jackley (1885–1950) was a comic actor who was the leading comedian for the Melville Brothers at the Lyceum Theatre during the interwar years.

"[4] Nat Jackley began his career in the 1920s as a double act with his sister Joy, and later joined The Eight Lancashire Lads.

[3][7] The same year, he appeared in the musical variety film Stars in Your Eyes, co-starring with Pat Kirkwood and Bonar Colleano.

Jackley appeared on television in The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour film in 1967 as Happy Nat the Rubber Man.

Other later credits included Jingle Bells (a Play for Today) (1973), the one-off Thames special Bentine (1975),[10] Angels (1976), Victoria Wood's Talent (1979), The Spoils of War (1980), Tales of the Unexpected, A Midsummer Night's Dream, as Snout,[11] The Old Boy Network as himself,[12] Dancing Country, a 1981 BBC2 Playhouse presentation, The Chinese Detective (1982), Juliet Bravo (1983), Threads (1984),[13] Dramarama and Minder (both 1985), and Lizzie's Pictures (1987).

Eventually, the ex-soubrette's alcoholic disruptiveness caused her to be banned both from the theatre and the local hostelry, a not infrequent occurrence wherever her unfortunate spouse was playing.

"[4] His third and final marriage to Pamela Rushworth proved to be happier, with the couple settling in Coventry, Warwickshire, where they were married in 1979.