Bookies slash Nessie odds after record sightings

Bookmakers have slashed odds on the myth of the Loch Ness monster being proved true after the eighth verified sighting this year.

Betway has cut the odds on the existence of Nessie being confirmed from 5000/1 to 500/1.

It comes after Dr Jo Knight, a lecturer at Lancaster University, spotted an unexplained “fin” shape in photographs taken by her son Sam while on a recent holiday to Loch Ness.

She forwarded her image to the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings register, which investigates alleged sightings of the mythical beast, which agreed it could be a picture of the famous beast

Gary Campbell, the recorder of the register, said the latest confirmed case made 2017 the busiest year for sightings this century.

Following the adjustment in odds, Betway now believes there’s more chance of Nessie’s existence being confirmed than there is of royals William & Kate naming their baby Wayne (750/1), AFC Wimbledon winning this season’s FA Cup (750/1) or New Zealand lifting the 2018 World Cup (1000/1).

Experts at the register were split 50-50 on whether the shape captured in the Knight family photograph could be classed as an official sighting.

Some members believed it was a wave or possibly an animal. It was finally accepted as an official sighting after the case was given the “benefit of the doubt.”

Mr Campbell said: “In recent years the most sightings in a year we have had is 17 - and that was in 1996.

“Before that the 1960s and 1930s were the times that had most sightings - sometimes more that 20 in a year.”