Keep it deep and mysterious

Published on Tuesday 16 August 2005 01:46

ACCORDING to the internet search engine Google, there are 394,000 websites about the Loch Ness monster. At very least, this suggests a law of inverse proportions that we might call Nessie's Law: namely the less she is seen the greater the interest in her.

Alas, along comes a team from Channel 5 to try to capitalise on this fascination by building a 440lb animatronic model Nessie for a 90-minute documentary to be shown later this month. In an experiment costing 100,000 the model, based on a plesiosaurus and built from fibreglass and polyurethane rubber by the same firm that created replicas for the BBC series Walking with Dinosaurs, was placed in Loch Ness for the tourists to see. Were they convinced? For that we will apparently have to wait for the screening, although, tantalisingly, we are told that the "results are really quite surprising".

Surely there is a flaw in Channel 5's approach. Surely the secret of Nessie's longevity as a celebrity has been her reluctance to showboat for the cameras, only being caught occasionally and fleetingly in dark, grainy photographs. Surely that would have been enough to leave the tourists unconvinced, this time anyway.