Is the Loch Ness Monster heading for real celebrity?

At this time of year my thoughts often dwell on the Loch Ness Monster. Let me recapitulate what we know about this beast. It was first spotted on 22 July 1932. It was described as crossing the main road running north of Loch Ness and being about six feet long. Later it was seen in the water, with its head above the surface. It had a long neck, a snake-like head and flippers, and was at least 20 feet long. A famous but indistinct photo was taken corresponding to this description. The monster has never again been seen on land but is often sighted, always in midsummer, holding its prehistoric head up and swimming strongly. Scotch stringers for London newspapers regularly visit the Loch at this time, hoping for a silly season story. They put up at the Drumnadrochit Hotel, whose bar is decorated with photos purporting to be of the creature.

The hotel also accommodates, from time to time, people of scientific or pseudo-scientific bent who come up to find or if possible capture the monster. They are rough diamonds rather than Einsteins; adventurers, rather like the men in that marvellous Edgar Wallace movie, King Kong, which dates from the same period (it might fairly be described as inter-war but pre-Hitler). Sometimes they have a young moll with them, like the delightful Fay Wray, to do a bit of screaming if the monster gets out and grabs her. ‘Nessie’-hunters sometimes bring elaborate equipment. In the 1980s they made a month-long sonar ‘scan’ of the Loch, which detected a moving object of large size. Experts on animals and reptiles were said to be ‘baffled’ and ‘amazed’. But nothing came of it. Another year the bird-man Peter Scott, having studied the dossier, baptised the monster Nessiteras rhombopteryx. Readers of popular newspapers were told this meant ‘The Ness creature with the fins in the shape of a diamond’.