The Loch Ness Monster was a hoax
1 January, 2006
I had just typed the above headline for The Storyteller when I looked at the Sunday Times and saw this headline:
PUBLISHERS TOSS BOOKER WINNERS INTO THE SLUSH PILE
And the first sentence is: "They can't judge a book without its cover"
So I interrupted the background on "Nessie" because the Sunday Times article says exactly what I was saying about the difficulty of finding a publisher and my advice to young starters to try self-publishing. One publisher said they receive 50 manuscriptw a day and one agent said she received 1,500 MS a year, but they both had red faces because the Sunday Times had exposed the incompetence of agents and publishers in London when they sent them the first chapters of two Booker Prize winners, V.S. Naipaul and Stanley Middleton, and 20 out of 21 of them had rejected the brilliant writing of these two feted authors! So what chance do beginners have? To send manuscripts back and forth between agents and publishers is a heart breaking and expensive exercise. So my advice remains the same: Publish your own book for your own satisfaction and treat it as a hobby which has to be paid for like stamp collecting or model making or sailing or golf.
Now, back to "Nessie":
"News desk please, old boy. Lime here. Hello, Jimmy? Yes, I got your SG's. What do you mean, out of touch? I've been out in the wilds of Northumberland on a story, which I gave you notice of in advance. Look, I've only got one pair of hands, Jimmy, and they're not stuck up my bloody arse. You will have the story as soon as I have written it, when I've kicked the cowshit off my shoes. Yes. Right. OKay."
-- From Chapter Four in Don't Tell My Mother I'm a Newspaperman (Vol.II of my Memoirs)
And it continues: He slammed the telephone down. Lucas Lime turned to Peter McGinn: "Do you know who that was? That was the man who invented the Loch Ness monster. With the help, of course, of a drunken Scotsman who claimed he had seen it. He was on holiday in Drumnadrochit and had a few jars with this old piss-pot who claimed he had seen the beastie. The story paid his holiday expenses."
"Jimmy" was Mr. James Lewthwaite, and it was not until I came out of the army in 1955 and joined the old Sunday Dispatch in Manchester that I met him. He ran the newsdesk on Saturdays for extra cash as he was bringing up two sons of school age. He was silver haired, with a snub nose, a small man with enormous energy who could strip down some poor reporter's story with a load of queries that made the newshound wish he was working somewhere else. Jimmy worked with the stub of a pencil, about an inch and a half in length and the "Who he?" "When?" "Where? "What time?" etc etc were scribbled very rapidly over the copy.
"Mister Lewthwaite" I said (we had to be polite to our elders in those days) "When I was in the Newcastle office of the Mail I was told you invented the Loch Ness monster when you were on the Daily Express and on holiday in Drumnadrochit." "Is that right, old man?" "Yes, and you did so well that the story paid for your holiday." "Is that right, old man?" he said, chuckling, "It was a scoop, anyway" I said. "Yes, old man, but it is better not to talk about old victories..." he threw the piece of copy back at me with about twelve queries on it. "Get on with it, old man," he said, and that was all he ever said about it. His sons became hard news reporters on the Mail and are retired now. One of them, who was pruning his roses when I spoke to him said: "Ah, yes, well I can say that it is not untrue " "Which means true." I said. "I said it was not untrue. Don't misquote me, old man. You won't pay your holiday expenses like that!"
"Nessie" was a fabrication, but she has earned a fortune for the locals over the years and holidays for earnest American professors with depth sounders and fancy boats with a nice round of golf between searches. Nessie is still paying for holiday expenses, and has been since 1933.