The Rest Is History - 233. The Loch Ness Monster

Episode Date: September 12, 2022

Does the Loch Ness Monster exist? When was the first mention of it recorded in history? And who are the people who have claimed to have seen it? Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss how a few 'sightings' of a mysterious creature took the world by storm... Join The Rest Is History Club for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. Or, if you're listening on the Apple Podcasts app, you can subscribe within the app in just a few clicks. The year was 1975, and on British television millions of viewers were about to discover the secret behind one of the greatest mysteries of all. Across the country, families watched open-mouthed with excitement as an intrepid band of investigators revealed the truth. Centuries earlier, an alien

spaceship had crashed into the freezing waters of the Scottish Highlands, a spacecraft belonging to a shape-shifting race called the Zygons. And now, in the age of Gerald Ford, Leonid Brezhnev, Harold Wilson and Karen Carpenter, the Zygons were preparing to unleash their ultimate weapon, a terrifying creature known as the Skarason, or as we would call it, the Loch Ness Monster. So Tom Holland, that was Doctor Who, Terror of the Zygons. And let's be honest, it's no more implausible than some other explanations of the Loch Ness Monster. And what did that description come from? Is it from a... I read that myself.

Did you? In which book? I read it just now. Did you? Do you not write bespoke introductions for episodes of The Rest is History? No, normally I rip them out of books. I'm very, very impressed. So you didn't write about this in any of your landmark histories of 1970s Britain?

Although I could have done, because actually what awakens the Skarrison and the Zygons in that Doctor Who story from 1975 is North Sea oil, is the efforts to get North Sea oil. So it's very, very timely. Right. So, I mean, this takes us immediately to the point of what we're talking about today, which is obviously the Loch Ness Monster. And you may may be wondering why are we talking about the loch ness monster in a history podcast because we're not crypto zoologists um or anything along that line dominic you're well known for your love of science and natural history of course everybody knows i love science but but that very specific mid-70s context for the lo Ness Monster shows, I think, why we're covering it. It's a historical phenomenon, isn't it?

It is a historical phenomenon. Because the 70s, when I was growing up, the Loch Ness Monster was a very, very vivid part of my mental imagination. Yeah. And we'll come to why later on i wonder if you had the same usborne book that i did which was a book of mysteries that had um the loch ness monster bigfoot the yeti i did all of you know and it's actually what these are these are interesting comparisons because they they're very revealing about why people become interested at a particular moment yeah in these kinds of phenomena.

Well, I did have that, but I also had another book, which was, and I can still, if I shut my eyes, I can visualize it. Absolutely. It was by a man called Tim Dinsdale, who again may reappear in our narrative. But on the cover, it was a purple, so it was a kind of twilight setting the lock um urquhart castle the famous ruined backdrop to so many uh illustrations of loch ness and there was a kind of plesiosaur so a long-necked aquatic reptile from the mesozoic rearing up its neck um and i i came across it just as I was emerging from my dinosaur obsession. But I so wanted it to be real.

I so wanted Nessie to be real. And I think lots of other people did, particularly in the 70s. I think they did. They still do, I think, Tom. And I think that sense of yearning, that sense of kind of desperation to believe that this had existed i think is a really interesting but tom also there are people who have uh who are very keen for it not to exist not least um members of the scottish government who have recently been publishing advice we shall come to this because they have very strong views about um the popular culture of the loch ness monster don't they and indeed have been encouraging been encouraging Scottish schoolchildren to delve into this issue.

Or have they? Well, we'll come to this. Or have they? Don't tell me this is yet another bit of fake, rest is history, fake news. That would be terrible. Well, the account I read was in the Daily Mail. And the Daily Mail, again, will play a very key part in this.

So Britain's best loved newspaper. So for those people who don't know, because I know we have a lot of Australians, lots of Americans, Belgians, Danes and so on who listen to this podcast. Tom, where is Loch Ness? OK, so what I would say, first of all, is that Loch Ness is not just a British phenomenon, that Loch Ness has a kind of global resonance. So we make no apologies for dealing with this subject. And it has featured in large numbers of Hollywood films,

all kinds of stuff. So the Loch Ness Monster is up there. You mentioned Bigfoot. You mentioned the Yeti. It's one of the kind of the big crypto zooids, I think. You're trying not to say the big beasts, aren't you? The big beasts. The big beasts. So the backdrop to this the setting of loch ness um it's the largest body of fresh water

in britain and ireland and it's basically very very long and very very thin yes if you imagine um the map of scotland uh there is a kind of it's called the great glen it's this great kind of valley that goes roughly kind of about 45 degrees doesn't it yeah um from the south up towards the north so it's from roughly fort william to inverness isn't it yes uh to uh and it's that the the lock itself is uh it's about a mile across. It's about 23, 24 miles long, and it's very, very deep. So at its deepest stretches, it's deeper than the North Sea is between Scotland and Norway, and it's very, very cloudy,

so very, very difficult to see what lurks beneath the depths, which is also obviously very important and for a long long time it was very very isolated the road that most people go along where castle features is on the um the western side and the the train on the eastern side is much harder to negotiate there is now a road and, we'll perhaps talk about how the road comes to be there. But basically, it's a very deep, very long, relatively speaking, certainly by British standards, isolated stretch of water. And that really is the context that Britain is a very crowded island. So the likelihood that there would be an unknown monster anywhere. Yeah.

Well, the Surrey Puma, of course, there were sightings of pumas in Surrey. Again, it was never tracked down. Beast of Bodmin. If you remember the Beast of Bodmin,

but monsters are more plausible, aren't they? The further you are away, you are away from the great kind of Southeastern metropolis. Well, so if you think of the other one, the Yeti is in the Himalayalayas they're very isolated bigfoot is sasquatch is kind of the the forests of um northwest america yeah so again very isolated i know the highlands are quite remote but they're still they're not that remote so it's it's extraordinary that the monster comes to have this purchase. It does.

And I suppose the question that that asks is why. And perhaps the best way to look at that is we've got a question from Tom, Boat History, Golding. Roughly what date is the first recorded mention of a monster in Loch Ness? Well, you have the answer to this, don't you? It's pure Tom Holland territory, this. Well, it have the answer to this, don't you? It's pure Tom Holland territory, this. Well, it's provided. The answer was provided on Twitter by none other than the great Fergal Sharkey.

So who's that, Tom? Lead singer of the Undertones. And, of course, the Lorax. People in Britain will know him as the Lorax of the chalk streams. He's been leading a campaign against the despoliation of our chalk streams by predatory water companies. He's one of your walking pals, isn't he? He took me for a walk along the River Ver, which is a river that gave its name to Verilinium.

All right, let's get back to Loch Ness. Let's get back to Loch Ness. When is the first mention of the Loch Ness monster? Tom? Well, as I was saying, Fergal gave us the answer to this. He said that he was answering on August the 23rd, and he said that yesterday, so in other words, August 22nd, was the 1457th anniversary of the first sighting of Nessie

by St. Columba, a famous Irish monk. What's this five about the year 565 we're talking about 65 by 55 so that is supposedly the first dating of a monster in loch ness and saint columbia you a fay with saint columbia i i there's i i think about saint columbia most days tom um but just remind me who who he was well he's an actually i Well, actually, remind the- I know, obviously, but remind the- Of course you do. He is an absolutely- He's a top early medieval saint. He's from Ireland. Columba means the dove. In Irish, he's called Colmcille. I hope I pronounced that right.

Any Irish listeners, let me know if I haven't. It means the dove of the church. And he, like so many of these kind of holy men from Ireland, is of an aristocratic background who then gives it up to lead a highly ascetic life. And it's that kind of process of self-abnegation that gives him his sense of power. But he brilliantly, according to tradition, that again is, as you say, one of those restless history facts that isn't a fact, but he gets into trouble because he gets embroiled in

the first ever battle fought over copyright. So there's a Welsh saint called Saint Finian who has a Psalter and Columba borrows the Psalter and makes a copy of it, and then says that he wants to keep the copy of it. And Finian says that he should have it back because he owns the original salter and therefore every copy properly belongs to him and so they take it to the high king of ireland who says to every cow belongs her calf therefore to every book belongs its copy so in other words that you know he's not a fan of book selling no irish law is very restrictive very very restrictive um and columbia is very cross about this because he has to hand the uh the copy of the salter over and so he he gets all his um his extensive and very very uh well-armed family to raise a rebellion against

the king and there's a big battle so it's the first battle over a copyright issue. And Columba basically, it's not looking... If you're a holy man, this isn't the kind of behavior that you want. So he leaves Ireland. So this is a story that's very, very late, written about a thousand years after Columbaus lived but i think it does draw on a tradition that perhaps columbus aristocratic background leads to him um being embroiled in dynastic politics in ireland in a way that is incommensurate with his status as a man of the church and also uh as you may remember when we talked about patrick um it's a big irish thing among the saints that you go into a kind of exile that you you go on a pilgrimage abroad so Saint Brendan going off to discover America is one Saint Columbanus going

to the the continent is another and Columba he just pops across the sea to uh to Scotland and he gets given the island of Iona and it's from Iona that he then goes up the Great Glen along Loch Ness up towards Fortriou which people from who listened to our episode on Macbeth may remember it's kind of Pictish kingdom around where Inverness is so that kind of area of Scotland and the Pictish king is called Bride and he's very interested in what Columba has to say he doesn't convert to Christianity but he allows Columba to come in and Columba has various bust up with the Druids who are hanging around with Bride. But the other thing that he has a bust up with is a mysterious monster that inhabits Loch Ness.

And the story is, and this comes from an account of Columba's life that was written about a century after he did this. So 565, he's crossing the River Ness and he sees this person being buried. And he asked, you know, what's been going on? And the people who are burying this body say that the man had been swimming, that he'd been seized and that he had been most savagely devoured by a water beast. And some people go out, they and and uh beat the the monster off um too late the guy is dead but they they manage to get the body back out of the monster's jaws and they bring him back and they they're burying him so columbia hearing this decides something needs to be done and so he tells one of his followers to go out and get a boat that is floating out in the in the lock and

uh one of his followers does this, goes out, but the monster is still hungry, so comes hurtling towards the man who's swimming out, and he's screaming and saying, ah, I'm about to be eaten. But Columba makes the sign of the cross, and... I'm reading it in here, yeah. You will go no further.

Do not touch the man. Turn back speedily. He said it in that voice, Tom. He said it exactly like that. So the beast does go back as if pulled back by ropes. It says here, I'm just reading the saint's life. And the guy, you know, everybody's delighted. And they say, hurrah, hurrah.

And so these people crucially are pagans, aren't they? So they see this and they say columbus must have access to this tremendous heavenly power isn't this splendid hurrah for god and jesus christ pretty much yes um and this is in the context of um well we we talked about tolkien last week so we talked about Beowulf. Beowulf's mother is a fearsome monster who inhabits a watery domain. So that sense of lakes and locks as being places where the spawn of Cain might live, monsters bred of the first murderer, is a tradition that is not just Germanic,

but clearly part of... Yeah, well, here's my question for you, Tom. As you're a man, I mean, if there's anybody I know who enjoys saints' lives, medieval saints' lives, you are that man. This would strike me as an absolutely classic saints' life formulaic device, rather than a genuine zoological topographical

description so in other words if you read saint's lives beasts are always lurking in rivers uh the saint is is using his powers to sort of cast them out or or whatever i mean especially you know what is this sixth century i mean this is an age when when people are writing saints lives they always follow set formulae and there's absolutely surely no reason to believe that saint columba genuinely confronted a creature of this kind in the river i'm not sure i'm not sure about that i i mean i don't think he did confront the lotless monster because i don't think the lotless monster existed but maybe some things that make it more specific i don't actually think that saints go around confronting aquatic monsters all that much i mean okay but

doesn't do it aiden doesn't do it uh all these other saints don't i bet you i bet you i can find examples of saints who confront well malevolent amphibians but if we're comparing it to beowulf i mean it's more a kind of heroic thing it's kind of a warrior thing and it may be a i don't know maybe it's a reflection of the fact that columbra is of of warrior stock perhaps um okay yeah i don't know but just one thing to throw into the mix is that um the picts famously didn't write so we we have no writings by the picts but they were very very keen on um sculpting they say absolutely wonderful sculptures and they were very keen on sculpting animals

and all the animals are instantly recognizable but there is one very there's one uh aberration uh one animal that doesn't seem to be anything recognizable at all and it's this kind of strange beast with um it's either a very long snout or a beak something so a bit like a kind of crocodile's jaws and flippers so maybe that's what inspired the story uh slightly clutching at stores there but but am i not right in saying though tom that okay so columb St. Columba has this confrontation with this beast, but then it kind of goes quiet. I mean, in the 10th century, in the 12th century,

people aren't saying, gosh, remember there's that monster up at Loch Ness. I mean, no one is talking about the Loch Ness monster at all. So I'm quoting here from an excellent book that was written seven years ago by Gareth Williams, A Monstrous Commotion, The Mysteries of Loch Ness,ous commotion the mysteries of loch ness which uh goes through the history of all these sightings and he quotes um a reference in 1520 yeah a chronicler saying that the monster of loch ness is still unkilled which is very could be you know intriguing person could be a bandit captain or something. It could be. Yes, it could be. Or a wolf or, you know, some horrible bear.

Do they have bears? I mean, maybe they didn't. But, you know, that doesn't mean that's pretty vague. It is. It is. Your searching scepticism is yet again puncturing the balloons of hope. But I think it reflects the fact that, as we said, that Loch Ness is very, very remote and isolated. And that again, of course, going back to Columba is a key part of it because the whole thing about saints is that they go to very remote places.

That's the mark of a holy man, whether it's a desert or whatever. So in a sense, going to the shores of a remote loch is part of that tradition. And basically people are not going there until the 18th century. So we mentioned how it's the western side that is much more easily approachable. The eastern side, very, very hard to get along because the kind of sheer cliffs and everything. And the guy who changes that is a man whose name must forever live in infamy, General Wade. Well, I think you're being a bit harsh on General Wade. Yes, because General Wade is an 18th century general, isn't he?

And he's tasked with building these military roads. In the aftermath of the Union of England and Scotland, there's been the Jacobite uprising. And the Hanoverians are very keen to bring Scotland, to bring the north of Scotland into the orbit of the newly formed union. And military roads are meant to enable people to march quickly if there's another Jacobite rising or something. So I guess, is Generalade badly regarded in scotland to this day tom yes so general so so wade basically creates the infrastructure in the highlands and he joins up all these forts that have been built to essentially kind of keep control of the highlands um he builds a lot of roads and

one of the roads that he builds kind of blasting out you know cliffs and so on so that he can construct this path is along the eastern side of Loch Ness. And I think, I mean, I think, I guess if you're a Jacobite, you're not very keen on this. But I think if you're wanting to get from one side of Scotland to the other, then it's great. So there's this famous verse written about about him if you had seen this road before it was made you would lift up your hands and bless general wade is that by some sort of mcgonagall

figure robert burns i don't think so um no and and so he's he so he's building his roads he also he recruits lots of highland regiments. And basically, these become the Black Watch. So this is a time when the Highlanders are seen by the British military authorities as a threat. But Wade is the guy who starts saying, well, actually, they're such good fighters, maybe we can get them into the British Army. So he's starting that. But then the reason why his name is to forever live in infamy is that Bonnie Prince Charlie's uprising happens and Wade is in Newcastle and Bonnie Prince Charlie goes on the other side. So he goes past Carlisle and gets all the way down to Derby before doing his retreat, going back to Culloden and so on, and escaping disguised as a French maid. Wade is so annoyed about this, the fact that he was unable to get from Newcastle over to Carlisle, that he decides to build another road linking Newcastle to Carlisle.

And he's in such a hurry that he looks around for convenient stone that could serve him as the foundations for this military road and what do you think the convenient stone is that he uses don't tell me he he he built a road out of hadrian's wall he does so general wade is the guy who basically destroys hadrian's wall and the reason why the only stretches of hadrian's Wall that survive are in areas where rugged cliffs and so on is because General Wade didn't want to go there. Still, I bet he got a bloody good road out of it, I imagine. Yeah, fine. So that's why not a fan. Not a fan.

Anyway, so Wade builds this road, and it's known as Wade's Road. And that opens up. People can now start going down Loch Ness on both sides and basically um it's from this point on that you start to get kind of mentioned so there are there are there are people um there are workmen who as they're building the road who report seeing two leviathans so two giant creatures they and they think they might be whales. Yeah. Then through the 19th century, occasional reports,

but I mean these reports are nothing. They're insubstantial, will-o'-the-wisp reports of exactly the kind that you would get all over the place. People who've actually probably seen a big fish, a seal a wave a wave a boat that you know it's a stormy day and they're yeah they're drunk or or they're just romantically inclined and they think they've seen something gosh we saw something in the water and probably their account of seeing something would be utterly lost and forgotten were it not for the fact that people started looking back and sort of you know delving through the archives to find every fleeting reference yes i but i think also it's a bit like you know a snowball going down a mountainside that it picks up velocity as it gathers weight

so 1888 there is a guy who who's clearly been drinking too much whiskey who claims to have seen a monster like a large salamander. So that makes it into the newspaper. I mean, a salamander, that's not... That's like a zygon, isn't it? Yeah, that's not the conventional image of the Loch Ness monster, is it, a salamander? No, no, it's not. And by the end of the 19th century,

it's become sufficiently well-known that people in America, in newspapers, can write about it, about there being a monster in Loch Ness. And it's kind of part of the Highland mythology. It's part of the romantic evocation, I guess, of the Highlands as a wilderness. I would guess no more than, say, the story of black dogs in Norfolk or something like that. If you're interested in folklore, perhaps you're aware of it. But most people, it's barely intruding. And then that changes with the 30s. And in the 30s, I think you could legitimately talk about Nessie mania. So before we get to the 30s, Tom, can I just interrupt you a second?

Because am I not right in thinking that the top necromancer, Alistair Crowley, he was involved with Loch Ness in some way. So for those people who don't know, he lived at the kind of turn of the 20th century. He was sort of Mr. Black Magic, the occult. He was the guy who popularized the occult. And I'm very happy to say, Tom, he's the third person in recent months to have appeared on this podcast who went to my old school. Did he?

Alistair Crowley went to your school? He did. So he joins James Jesus Angleton, demented CIA counterintelligence chief and top wardrobe purveyor C.S. Lewis as fellow old Malvernians like me. But they weren't. God, imagine C.S. Lewis and Alistair Crowley together. They must have been. I think there were different generations, to be fair.

They weren't in the same rugger team. No, no, no. They didn't share a dorm. So Alistair Crowley, he lived near the log, didn't he? He wore a kilt and sort of pretended to be a laird. Yes, yes. But didn't he put up signs, or I've seen from your notes, he put up signs warning people about the Kalu Mavlik.

Yeah. He basically invented a monster to keep people off his land. We didn't even say it was a monster. He never said what the Kalu Mavlik was. He just put the signs up. And people became so terrified of him that they wouldn't go on his land we didn't even say it was a monster he never he never said what this calum avlik was he just put the signs up and people became so terrified of him that they wouldn't go on his land so it obviously worked he claims that he invented the lotness monsters i see well he did yes he did subsequently but but this is drawing on the on the reputation that he was already getting as a man of deep wickedness who summoned up demons and devils and so on yeah um so i think i again i don't think that that i mean once the loch ness monsters become famous then then crowley comes in and says

yes it was all me but i again i don't think that that is part of what's feeding into it and so the question of what does feed into it therefore becomes incredibly interesting and i think that what we should do i think we should take a break now and I think when we come back we should look at what happened in the 30s Nessie mania why it might have happened and then the aftershocks of that I hope I'm not going to spoil it for people when I say

I believe one of the world's finest newspapers may well have been evolved am I right Tom? you are right join us to find a paper after the break. Which could it be? I'm Marina Hyde.

And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets,

head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Now, very excitingly, top zoological pioneer, explorer, researcher, Tom Holland is poised to solve the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster. No, I'm not. So, Tom, we've reached the 1930s. Yeah, you are.

We've reached the 1930s. You claim that the 1930s has the key to the mystery. Well, it's 1933 specifically. Yes. Okay, 1933. Everything kicks off in 1933, and you get this cascading sequence of sightings of the monster. And what's interesting is the way that the various elements of it

become more and more recognizable to us. So in a sense, the image of the monster that we all have, you can see it coalescing in front of you when you look at all these various reports so the first one is um a woman called aldi mckay who is driving with her husband down the castle urquhart side um and this is the western side yeah and the western side uh and this gets reported um by the local the courier in inverness and this this is how the Inverness courier reports it. So quoting Aldi Mackay,

the creature disported itself, rolling and plunging for fully a minute, its body resembling that of a whale and the water cascading and churning like a simmering cauldron. Soon, however, it disappeared in a boiling mass of foam. Both onlookers confessed that there was something uncanny about the whole thing,

for they realized that here was no ordinary denizen of the depths because apart from its enormous size the beast in taking the final plunge sent out waves that were big enough to have been caused by a passing steamer wow which perhaps begs the question of whether whether it was caused by passing steamer yeah i think the passing steamer reference there is uh is is disturbing to me to be honest yes so people are steaming on the lock at this point tom are they they are the lock is becoming a place of pleasure i suppose so i'm not entirely okay with uh with with lock nest the history of the tourist board of yeah yeah but it's not but but Dominic it's not it's not tourists so um because there's not you know there's the story of the monster

hasn't got any currency and there's not a lot else to see apart from a large expanse of water but you have um you have people who can basically be trusted because they are either sort of the earth water men people who are familiar with the waters so there's um uh there's there's a water bailiff uh called alex campbell who over the course of the summer will come to him in a minute sees a he introduces a crucial element to the story but before that you also have more motorists and again and again it's all about motorists going down the line of the lot and these are two english tourists george spicer and his wife and what's interesting about them is that they don't see it in the lock they see it crossing the road in front of them i mean this the

description is it's terrifying they're driving along the road aren't they july 1933 so they're clearly on their summer holiday and they see a large creature, 25 feet long. A long, wavy, narrow neck, slightly thicker than an elephant's trunk. And George Spicer describes it as the nearest approach to a dragon or prehistoric animal that I have ever seen in my life. Which may be saying nothing because presumably he'd never seen a dragon or a prehistoric he says it had an animal it had an animal in its mouth and a body that's fairly big with a high back where webbed feet he can't say if it had a tail because it moved so rapidly when we got to the spot it had probably disappeared into the log and actually when you read up on them they don't sound like fraudsters mr and mrs george biser from golders green because he works at a gentleman's

tailors in the west end he's the director yeah um yeah uh and so that again you know this seems a reputable witness a gentleman's tailor he's not going to be lying is he but the gentleman's tailor so this is really the of all the descriptions of the monster this is really the, of all the descriptions of the monster, this is probably the most important, would you say, Tom? Because it's the one that really establishes the... Well, it blends with Alex Campbell, the water bailiff, because it's Alex Campbell. He describes seeing a monster with a long wavy neck. And it's Alex Campbell who first suggests that it is like a plesiosaur. And the plesiosaur is the long-necked Jurassic creature with the flippers. But George Spicer is unusual. I mean, it's worth emphasising this point. His description is so unusual because he describes the monster not in the water.

So the monster is wandering out on the road. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. A description that has never been repeated. So the monster was wandering on the road. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. A description that has never been repeated. So nobody else has ever seen the monster trudging around on the A roads. But he does say that you can't see its legs.

So the opportunity for it actually to have flippers and perhaps it's hauling itself out of the ground, out of the water, is still there. So this description gets taken to a naturalist who says that that it was almost certainly an otter which must have been an enormous otter 25 feet long right so this is this is what this is what uh mr spice's reply that um the creature he had seen was far too big to be an otter and spice goes on to say it should definitely be killed yeah that's that's the british spirit the English spirit, isn't it? Shoot it. So this kickstarts a huge amount of interest, doesn't it, in the press? Well, of course.

Because people presumably believe Mr Spicer is telling the truth. Yes. Well, you've got this reputable gentleman's tailor from London, and you've got this water bailiff who is you know the ghillie that kind of sort of the earth figure from a john buckham novel all that kind of thing again absolutely trustworthy and the pair of them their evidence combines to imply that there is this creature with a very long curvy neck and it's campbell who says this is a plesiosaur and that's what then really kick-starts it because it's not just a monster but it's a scientific monster yeah so it could

be a kind of prehistoric hangover and that's really I think what what gets people excited and so from then on you start to get this cascade effect so you in november 19 1933 you get the first photograph or at least alleged photograph um a photograph that by a man called hugh gray and i see from your notes it says um a photograph that's actually believed to be of his own dog getting a stick from the lock so i mean i hope if there are a lot Ness Monster enthusiasts into this who are dismayed by my skepticism, I have to warn you there is more skepticism to come. Yes. But yeah, so that photograph is not definitive evidence. I think it's fair to say, Tom.

And then what hots up is that you start to get eccentric figures coming up. The kind of the image of the big game hunter or the uh kind of professor challenger figure from the the conan doyle stories so um the first monster hunter is a man called commander rupert gould who as his title implies had been in the navy um he was very kind of eccentric uh man who loved going down rabbit holes to some effect because he is the man who um discovered uh john harrison's chronometers which are you know the the latitude guy okay uh and he'd found these chronometers uh kind of buried away in the um uh the national maritime museum in greenwich and he got them finding some chronometers in the museum it's not the same as finding a monster in a lock it's not but you know

these chronometers are a big deal and they've been ignored and he's dusted them down and he's produced them so he has this i'll tell you now we're not doing a podcast about the chronometer i know we're not i know we're not but he is also when he's not mending chronometers he's obsessed by the idea of sea monsters the idea that there are long neck creatures out in the out in the the ocean but he's the obvious person to turn to with the idea of sea monsters the idea that there are long neck creatures out in the out in the the ocean but he's the obvious person to turn to with the idea that maybe it's you know it's actually in this this lock um and he gets funding from a guy who is um he's the heir to i think it's dundee marmalade which is the most popular very big marmalade big big marmalade in uh in 1930s britain um a guy called alexander keeler who is uh has the nymphomaniac qualities um he's a sex addict

so when he's when he's not being a sex addict he's he's funding uh commander rupert gould to go after the loch ness monster however howeverupert Gould is not the only hunter, and this, Dominic, is where Britain's best-loved newspaper comes in. Well, just before we come to Britain's best-loved newspaper, I just want to put forward a theory, which is, of course, we're in the 1930s, so the world has been mapped, and the days of Victorian explorers are kind of over, aren't they? I mean, even the poles have been conquered.

So the obsession with creatures of the deep, I mean, this is a generation that has... Actually, you mentioned Professor Challenger. These are now people who have grown up reading Conan Dore's The Lost World, I suppose, aren't they? And there are no more worlds to conquer other than the deeps. And so if you if you if you fantasize about lost kingdoms or or you know surviving dinosaurs the oceans are really the only

place to look i suppose do you think tom i think that's absolutely true well let's let's look at this further when we've described the next character who turns okay so you mentioned um the newspapers uh and the newspaper in question is the daily mail so for people i know we have a lot of overseas listeners so that's basically the british equivalent of le monde or um newspaper record i think people call it uh that's not that's not entirely true um is there an equivalent of the daily mail in other countries i'm not sure it's i think i think these days it's actually the daily mail i mean it's um it's it's much detested by people on the left um much written for by people like dominic well would be fair to say

uh well the daily mail is enormous in the popular culture of the early 20th century so it's founded in the 1890s by alfred harmsworth and um it is sort of attention-grabbing journalism uh and what the daily mail does a lot in the 1920s and 30s is stunts and wheezes so they're always sending people to discover things or they're investigating mysteries or they're always sending people to discover things or they're investigating mysteries or they're inventing hats or they're sponsoring you know the first um british radio broadcast nelly melba on the top of a department store so they're always doing these kind of they've constantly got gimmicks i guess yeah and this maintains their audience i mean their core audience which is a sort of populist audience, sort of lower middle class,

ordinary people who can't be bothered to read The Times, which is also owned by the same newspaper baron at one point. They don't want to wade through sort of turgid prose, sort of column after column of it. They want fun and they want sensation. And this is before television so it's yeah it's a kind of it's the closest you get to uh you know i guess kind of documentary about aliens on the history channel or something like that right that's basically what's going on here because they see the editorial

team see the photograph that may be of this dog but it's being marketed as the photograph of a monster and so they decide that they want proof and they want to blazon it over the front page of the newspaper. And so this is the first intrusion of the London press into the story. So up to now, it's all been local newspapers, particularly based in Inverness. And so suddenly the London press turning its attention to Loch Ness and they employ, even as Commander Gould is out on his boat

hunting for the monster, they employ an extraordinary figure called Marmaduke Wetherall. You couldn't make him up because he's great. No, no. So he's an actor, but he's also a big game hunter. Do you know what he'd performed in? he'd performed in he'd he'd played both david livingston and robinson crusoe in films he directed and written himself yeah that's the kind of man we're dealing with absolutely and that sense that he's both he's he's an actor who's kind

of played people who've been into africa on great quests like david livingstone but he's also um a big game hunter who's been to Africa on quests is absolutely kind of redolent of that mood in the early 30s I think isn't it of the way in which the kind of the traditions of Victorian daring do and imperial adventuring are starting to cannibalize themselves because actually you know there's as you say there's not much of the world left unexplored and so if you're going to have thrills and spills and explorers you need to start migrating to to film you know lost valleys of the amazons or whatever and and there's obviously a very obvious cinematic example of this that we'll come to when we've finished our roundup of uh of all the sightings but of course wetherill cannot afford to come back and say it's all hokum can he i mean

it's but it's both in the daily mail's interests but crucially in his interests that he this sort of bearded you know this this sort of professor challenger figure as you say the arthur cody character he absolutely needs to come back with something. And for two days, he finds nothing. And then on the third day, Tom, what happens? So on the third day, he's on the kind of the really wild eastern side, the General Wade's Roadside, which is mainly rock. So very little mud but he comes across a very short patch of mud and there remarkably are some stunning prints and they're eight inches

across they've got four short clawed toes and they look a little bit like a hippopotamus but obviously it can't be a hippopotamus because you don't know hippopotamuses in uh in Loch Ness monsters um and nearby another set of of uh of prints uh and this is obviously a massive stroke of luck because it seems that the monster if it is the monster has walked across one of the very few stretches where the imprint of its footprints would be left. What a great answer. What a joke. Incredible. And so, whether or not it wires back to the Daily Mail, have found the monster, and the Mail clears its headlines. Monster of Loch Ness is not a legend but a fact. Well, that's the kind of understated headline

you would absolutely expect. So, huge excitement. And only once they've run the headline do they then send the prints to the natural history museum in london to see if they can um identify it and they say the natural history is in say yeah well they say that it is not the impression of any known aquatic mammal in the british isles um but they continue to do the research uh And in the new year, so early 1934, they reveal that it is in fact a hippopotamus footprints. And it's a single footprint. So in other words, it's a single footprint of a hippopotamus that has been pressed down into the mud over and over again to make it look like there are multiple footprints. And the Natural History Museum suggests that it's a hunting trophy, a hippopotamus foot,

that's been converted into an umbrella stand, which is very much the kind of thing that... That's such a 1930s story. You kill a hippopotamus and you turn one of its legs into an umbrella stand. So I think this is a story that speaks very well of Marmaduke Wetherill, actually, because he is a man who clearly had the foresight to travel to Scotland with a hippopotamus foot umbrella stand in his luggage just in case. Just in case.

Go on. Well, I think more probably it wasn't him it was someone else who did it who was making fun of him i think so yeah because as we will find out whether or is unbelievably upset by this and he's particularly upset by the fact that the male rather than standing by their man in his his hour of need turn on him and call him an idiot and mock him roundly for his incompetence mcgain goes all over the front page i can't believe they would have done something like that tom shocking behavior and very unlike anything you get from it now so uh so wetherill is left very very embittered and

with a big grudge against the mail and against um everybody involved in the search for Nessie. So he withdraws, licking his wounds. But over the course of 1934, more and more extraordinary developments happen. So, and again, you get people, the witnesses who cut through are witnesses who everyone can recognize as being reputable and reliable. So early in January, you have a veterinary

student on a motorbike who almost runs into the monster so dominic that's another one where the monster is out of the out and about rolling around doesn't i mean odd that it doesn't happen so much these days but uh and and and the the veterinary student again says that it looks exactly like a plesiosaur so and then in april stacking up in april you get probably the the key piece of evidence and it's in the form of a photograph and it's much a much better photograph than the photograph that looks like a dog's head and in fact i would go so far as to say it's one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century it is you know it's the photograph that everybody's seen yeah yeah it's the famous publicized this podcast with.

Yeah. So it looks like a plesiosaur. That's how you would describe it. It's a long neck creature with a hint of back. And there are kind of ripples around it, black and white. And you would know it if you've seen it. And this is known as the surgeon's photo. And it was taken in April 1934.

And it's called the surgeon's photo because the person who took it was both a surgeon but didn't want to to be named and again this reticence was seen as something that suggested that you know the accuracy of it because he clearly wasn't after publicity he's not after publicity um and it it turns out so that the surgeon is a man called robert wilson um who's a gynecologist has rooms off harley street and the whole i mean again this is another character who seems sprung from a bucking novel um the the kind of the hint of tales of imperial daring do so he is born in madagascar he's the son of missionaries um he goes to boarding school in England uh the he he comes

of age during the first world war the day that he becomes of age he rushes off enlists serves very valiantly and well in the in the first world war gets mentioned in dispatches uh comes back sets up his medical practice um and he is the person who produces this photo and the the daily mail get hold of it they cop it to make it look as impressive as possible they put it on the front page and really that is the photograph that makes it not just a global a national talking point, but a global talking point. And basically everyone is obsessed by it to the degree that even Nessie's MP runs into it. So Sir Murdoch MacDonald, who's the MP for Invernessshire, and he's driving with his son early on the morning

of the 8th of August, and he sees Nessie, his most famous constituent. And it's two blackish grey humps moving slowly south. And it's not just the MP who sees it. It's also seen, and I'm quoting here, Gareth Williams, A Monstrous Commotion, his great book, says the site was witnessed by a semi-naked Yorkshireman who sprang out of his caravan with binoculars and confirmed that it was neither a tree trunk nor a boat. The MP was on his way to see the Secretary of State for Scotland, who was happy to accept the monster as a reasonable excuse

for starting their meeting late. So you've had an MP, you've had a semi-naked Yorkshireman, you've had a veterinary student, you've had a surgeon, you've had a water bailiff, you've had a gentleman's tailor. A broad array of very, very respectable figures. Although, had a gentleman's tailor. Okay. My skepticism is routed. These are a broad array of very, very respectable figures. Although, so the surgeon's photograph, the photograph that we're all very familiar with, people have analysed it very closely when they live, discussed the ripples. They have.

They have. And am I right in thinking there is a twist with the surgeon's photograph? There is a twist. Should we reveal the twist now or should we say it? Well, it's your choice. You're enjoying yourself're enjoying yourself far too much i'm gonna let you decide okay so the the twist is that the search and this was discovered i think in the 90s to everyone's huge disappointment that it was a fake and it was faked by our old friend marmaduke wetherall who did it with an associate of robert wilson

and they went to a kind of you know a a shallow part of the lock and they made a model of it and they photographed it and basically if you look at the original photo before it got cropped by the to go on the front page of the mail um it it looks much more like a fake than it does in the the famous version of it um and they bought a toy submarine hadn't they and they made a sort of wooden a wooden thing to go on the top yeah um and um basically wetherill did it to get his own back uh but in a way the laugh was on him because you're right everyone i read this so seriously he he thought this he would make fools of the mail by getting them to print this story on the front page um but they did and it was tremendously

successful massively boosted the circulation hurrah yes yeah so um as as sort of yeah as revenge goes it wasn't very successful now that that's not a salamander it's not a salamander but that of course is the image that we now so it's the a salamander it's not a sound but that of course is the image that we now so it's the dinosaur image isn't it and i suppose the 1930s you know it's an age of tremendous scientific interest in dinosaurs of popular interest so you can see white courts the public imagination but i think i think that i i mean we talked about um film and we talked about adventure stories where people go to remote areas of the world because basically there aren't any remote areas of the world anymore. And the most famous cinematic example of that is King Kong.

Yeah. And King Kong comes out in London in spring 1933. And it comes out in, I think think it reaches inferness by the summer oh very good and in king kong um i don't know if you remember it there's a sequence where so king kong is uh it's you know king kong is the giant gorilla gets brought back to new york and climbs the empire state building everyone knows that story. But on the island, King Kong lives there surrounded by dinosaurs. And the big game hunters who are going off

to capture King Kong and get Fay Wray back from him, as part of this expedition, are shown crossing a swamp in which a long-necked dinosaur, so a sauropod, emerges. Sauropods were vegetarian, herbivorous, but in this they're very carnivorous and ferocious. And they attack, they upend the boat, and then the monster chases the fleeing explorers through the jungle. And the profile of that monster in King Kong

is very, very like a lot of the drawings. And then in due course, the photograph, the surgeon's photograph that you get. And it's hard, I think, hard to think that it's not influencing it. Because the degree to which the monster comes to be described as a plesiosaur almost exactly maps onto the the the screening of of king kong yeah i mean i'm i'm sure not deliberately but it's just such a kind of dramatic um such a dramatic image and you know as you say i think i think that it is a kind of an expression of you know a yearning for those tales of of daring doing distant climbs in a world where everything is closing in well you were talking about motoring weren't you so i mean

the 30s is a hate is a golden age of motoring people getting cars for the first time new roads and so on yeah so the road has been given an upgrade yeah as well that's so the highlands have kind of been opened up to an extent to lots of visitors. So you've got a tourist industry that is taking off. But at the same time, I suppose there's also an anxiety that the world is becoming, you know, the anxiety that we're so familiar with today, that the world is becoming globalized and homogenized and a yearning, therefore, for places to have this kind of romantic, epic grandeur and mystery and this sort of primitivism, I suppose. I mean, this is what the Scottish government's education materials that recently caused headlines in Britain about Loch Ness. This is what they point out, isn't it?

This is what they say, that the Loch Ness. This is what they point out, isn't it? This is what they say, that the Loch Ness Monster is, in a way, it's part of the same kind of romanticisation of Scotland as you get with Kilt, Tartan, Rob Roy, Braveheart. Do you not think, Tom, there's a bit of that about it? It sort of locates Scotland as a place where there are dinosaurs in contrast to cosmopolitan metropolitan urban england or the lowlands of scotland more pointedly because it's absolutely a scottish story i mean that you know the the daily mail comes crashing in from london as an outsider but it's absolutely not

um an english invention it's not a an english projection um i saw Alex Massey, a very distinguished journalist and columnist, rather, I mean, his kind of tongue firmly in his cheek was asking about this. It's Loch Ness Monster comes from Scottish traditions and it's Scots who initially see it. And of course, Loch Ness Monster has been a fundamental part of how Scotland marks itself to the world. It's a crucial part of the tourist infrastructure. It brings people to the highlands. And that is something that starts right from the beginning, that you are having... So people are...

Huge, huge numbers descend on Loch Ness over 1933 and 34. There's this extraordinary story. I was tipped off about this by Neil K on the Discord, that Scotland's first football floodlights were taken away to be used to highlight the lock. So this has been put up by Caledonian FC and Inverness. And this was kind of very innovative. They were the first football club in the country to use floodlights in this

way. And I think they've used them for about three or four games. And um somebody bought them to put up on the shores of loch ness to to kind of try and highlight um the presence of the monster and the poor club only got their floodlights back again in 1959 which is very sad um but people throughout the post-war years so by this point the monster had i guess become embedded in the national imagination in the world's imagination become part of the the tourist industry but you do get quite distinguished people don't you you do a man who was the curator of fishes at the map well so one of the things one of the things that happens just before the world goes into war and i think also one of the one of

the other reasons why it kicks off in 1933 and 34 is this the depression it's coming to power of hitler in germany it's a really dark time and people want cheering up and it's a kind of perfect story and i think that that that it's a bit actually a bit like the discovery of tutankhamen it's a good new story and it's a quest and i'm sure that the shadow of tutankhamen which again has this kind of interface with the press quests dramatic characters kind of big game figures all these kind of you know panoply of characters who you might recognize from a film very similar with loch ness except with the convenience you don't have to go all the way to egypt you know yeah it's

there in britain it's kind of waiting on your doorstep. But one of the things I think that does serve to elevate the whole narrative above a kind of King Kong level is in 1938, a fish called the coelacanth is discovered in waters off South Africa. And the coelacanth had been thought, you know, it's a very, very ancient fish. It had basically been around since, I think, 350 million years old, something like that, and was thought to have gone extinct with the dinosaurs because there was no fossil trace of it after that.

And then it got discovered in 1938. And so suddenly the idea that creatures that had been thought extinct might not have gone extinct is scientifically reputable and that is something that feeds through through the war years through the 40s into the 50s and yes and as you say so so in the 50s um the curator of fishes at the natural history museum so he's a guy who's absolutely on top of cedar camp from the implications of it he's at Loch N. He sees a large humped object going through the water and he's convinced it's a plesiosaur and he rushes back and tells

everyone. And the Natural History Museum are not amused and he gets forced out. Well, he presumably wanted to see it. Do you think, Tom? He wanted to see the monster. Yeah, probably. But the person who really kind of kickstarts the whole obsession again in the 60s is this guy Tim Dinsdale who wrote the book that I mentioned at the start of the of the of this episode who he's a an aeronautical engineer working at Heathrow I mean you know the most unromantic location imaginable and he's on holiday in the highlands in in I think spring 1960 and he sees Nessie and he's got Phil he's got camera and he's on holiday in the highlands in in i think spring 1960 and he sees nessie and he's got phil he's got camera and he films it and it's it's that footage that

people can actually look at it and this attracts the attention of a very very distinguished figure a man called sir peter scott and domin, you mentioned, you specified how the world is shrinking because people have been to the poles. And Peter Scott is the son of Scott of the Antarctic. Yeah, Robert Falcon Scott. Yeah, and Scott of the Antarctic, in I think his last letter to his wife, just before he dies,

Peter Scott is two years old at this point. He writes to his wife and says, please make sure that Peter grows up with a love of the natural world. Andeter does grow up with the love of the natural world he becomes very very distinguished initially he's a sportsman he shoots duck that's that shows a great love but but he then kind of turns and he he um he becomes an ornithologist he becomes conservationist he helps to set up the world wildlife fund Fund. I was about to say, as a boy, I went to his wildfowl place at Slimbridge. It was a great place for school outings in the 1970s and 1980s.

And I imagine quite a few of our listeners will have been there and will know of him because of his role setting up the World Wildlife Fund. So he's Scott's son,ott the antarctics and he is a a kind of hangover again from that age of imperial daring do so he's very distinguished war record uh he is uh an olympic athlete so he wins bronze i think in the dinghy racing in the the um the berlin olympics of 36 so that's the hitler olympics yeah um and the dinghy racing is held at keel and he then goes back and bombs it with the raf um so he's he's um a very brave kind of dashing man he marries elizabeth jane elizabeth jane howard who then goes on to marry king's

amos doesn't she become martin amos's um stepmother so very interesting man and he he meets up with dinsdale looks at the footage and basically becomes obsessed and becomes he really wants the loch ness monster to be real and perhaps there's all kinds of stuff to do with his father i don't know know. I mean, maybe I'm over psychologizing it there, but perhaps, you know, he wants to find something that would. Yeah.

You know, it'd be remarkable and extraordinary, a great quest as his father had gone on. And in the seventies, he, he, he and Dinsdale meet up with an American lawyer from Boston, a man called Robert Rines, who in the early 70s starts using sonar to explore the lock. And in 1972, the sonar picks out a huge shape, plus another photograph of what might, seen from a certain angle, look like a flipper.

Yes, I've seen those pictures. Of course, angle, look like a flipper. Yes, I've seen those pictures. Of course, it might not be a flipper. That's the downside of that photo. Well, so these get picked up by a man who anyone interested in royal affairs in Britain will be very, very familiar with, a man called Nicholas Whitchell. This is such a bizarre part of the story. The BBC royal correspondent.

Back in the early 70s he was um he was a student uh and he becomes a massive massive kind of nessie twitcher and he writes a book about it um and so scott and uh and dinsdale read nicholas witchell's book and they get in touch with with robert rhimes um and you know they all team up and in 75 rhines takes another extraordinary photo um which again if you know anything about the last month you'll recognize it's a kind of yellowish photo and it seems to show a head on a long neck attached to a kind of body uh again it requires a certain deep of faith, but once you've seen it, if you're looking for it, that's what you see. And this encourages Scott to propose that the Loch Ness Monster actually exists. And he comes up with a scientific name for it. And he wants to use the

Loch Ness Monster as an icon for conservation. So in other words, if there is this prehistoric creature that is in the loch, log then it shows the you know it reveals the wonders of the natural world in a way that would sir you know enable the monster to serve as an absolute kind of ambassador for global conservation so that's what that's what he's um he's interested in he summons people from uh across the the scientific natural, the world of natural history and makes his case. And the response of the former chairman of the Natural History Museum's trustees is to say, we cannot do this without a specimen.

You know, we need a physical specimen. And without that, the chairman says, the monster not merely beggars description, but buggers it. And the response of of david attenborough who is a good friend of peter scott keen conservationist scott would like attenborough on board david attenborough's response is to say it's very courageous yeah um paleontologists say we we can't do anything about this without bones. And basically people don't accept that Peter Scott has a leg to stand on with this. And for Peter Scott's reputation, I think it's a bit like Hugh Trevor Roper and the Hitler Diaries.

It's, you know, it's a man with an incredibly distinguished reputation using that reputation to try and convince people that something so extraordinary as to seem incredible actually is true but it does turn out to be incredible and it uh it kind of really damages Scott's reputation in the way that Hugh Trevor Roper's reputation was damaged by his authenticating the Hitler diaries. So what's interesting about this, Tom, is that the story of the Loch Ness Monster as a historical phenomenon turns out not to be really a story about the Loch Ness Monster so much as it's a story about, well, it is a story about Scotland and its place in the

imagination as a sort of wild, as the Highlands as a kind of wild part of the United Kingdom. But it's also really, am I pushing it too far to say it's a story about the aftermath of the Victorian kind of, in inverted commas, conquest of the natural world and of imperialism? Yeah. And what do the next generation do? What do people like, what's his name? What's his name? Marmaduke Wether like what's his name that mom what's in marmaduke wetherill or whatever his name is yeah um or or or peter scott people who are living in the shadow

yeah and the duke of edinburgh as well i mean it's all that kind of it's it's that class of person who are coming of age in the 30s the 40s the 50s who have been raised by the traditions and the stories told of the British Empire to assume that their destiny is to go out and discover distant lands, strange valleys, rocky plateaus with dinosaurs on them, all that kind of stuff, that mythology of imperialism. And it's all gone and in a way the loch ness monster is a kind of a ghostly after echo of that and i think that that's why you get all these kind of figures uh marmaduke wetherall uh peter scott who are almost like figures out of time

yeah and i but but i think it's not just about imperialism. I think it is also about a growing anxiety about the depletion of the natural world, about the collapse of biodiversity. I mean, people wouldn't have put it like that in the 50s. But Peter Scott was an absolutely committed conservationist and i think that he was on to something with this idea that the loch ness monster might be an icon because in a way our yearning to believe that the loch ness monster

exists our yearning to believe that um a plesiosaur might have survived extinction is expressive of our longing to believe that you know huge numbers of species can survive extinction yeah you know it's there are more recent creatures where you know so the thylacine which is a um marsupial creature in tasmania that was wiped out um people again and again and again report seeing it in in in tasmania it always turns out not to be the case but again it kind of speaks almost of a kind of guilt i think yeah and it's interesting that um the loch ness monster coincides within 20 or 30 years with both yeti and bigfoot so bigfoot um in america um so as you said it's the pacific northwest i think it's a really a 1950s 60s kind of phenomenon and

again i wonder if it's the same you know the united states is being opened up by eisenhower's you know highways um by air travel and so on and people want to believe that there's a bit of the wilderness left and whether that's guilt or whether it's romanticism or exoticism i mean who can say um so you don't believe in the response to tom what a shame what a disappointment well i think it's i think it's pretty it's it's conclusively been proved not to exist because um what's happened of course in recent years is you've got dna that basically torpedoes all kinds of fantasies and dreams um and they they did um a study of the dna in loch ness and there is nothing unusual at all in the genetic material so you know if if there was a

loch ness monster it's not there now so so that's very sad top party pooper tom holland but just just you know we talked about the scott Scottish tourist industry. Just one shout out for the Scottish tourist industry. Because have you been to Loch Ness? I've never been to Loch Ness, Tom. Okay. Well, it's great. I mean, it's really worth it. If you've had any interest in Loch Ness Monster, to go there, to look at the castle, it's all very familiar.

But they have a magnificent museum devoted to it. And you go around all this museum and the final room, it's saying, what was it? And I was fully expecting them to say it was a plesiosaur or something, or we don't know. And they say it was a sturgeon.

That's, I thought that's really admirable that you've got this massive cash cow that tourists come all over the world. You basically say you've been, you know, no, it doesn't exist. So kudos to whoever runs that museum.

Okay. I think we've put that one to bed as well. Don't you Tom? And on that bombshell, we will say goodbye and we will see you next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. bye bye bye bye thanks for listening to the rest is history

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