TALES OF THE LOCH NESS MONSTER In the late 1960’s Nessie Fever hit a peak. It seemed hardly a day went by without an alleged new sighting of the prehistoric pest. “New Photo of the Loch Ness Monster! Proof that it exists” Newspaper headlines would scream. “That’s a picture of a log. Proof that a tree has fallen into the water.” We’d all mumble. We at Cutty Sark are not ones to accept the hysterical nonsense of any old attention seeker lightly. In 1971 we dared the Loch Ness Numpties to put our money where their mouth was and offered a cool £1,000,000 to anyone who caught the beastie alive. Or at least provided a copy of its passport. However, being an open minded bunch, the realisation soon dawned on us it was entirely possible there was some truth to the tales and Nessy might come back to bite us on the bum. In a figurative sense of course. With that in mind we swiftly insured our million quid with Lloyds who stipulated the risk would only be covered if: 1. The Loch Ness Monster was captured alive. 2. It was in excess of 20 feet in length (so no passing off strangely shaped trout as the Ness-meister) 3. The curators of the Natural History Museum agreed the captured specimen was indeed The Loch Ness Monster. Although how they would know was never really verified. “Oh yes we’ve got hundreds of mythological sea creatures here, the place is awash with them. We’re getting a bit sick of the darn things actually. People keep leaving them on our doorstep with labels saying Please Look After My Mythological Sea Creature. It’s a terrible imposition.” Strangely enough, to this day the £1million bounty has remained unclaimed. We’re assuming it’s because Nessie is an elusive master of disguise.