IN January of 1934 the Daily Mail, just as much of a reactionary rag as it is today, excelled itself with its most despicable and notorious headline.

“Hurrah for the Blackshirts!” it proclaimed above a paean of praise for Oswald Mosley and his fascist bully-boys.

In the April of that same year it reported on a strange unknown creature in Loch Ness and published a photograph. 

In the Mail’s pages you could read about horrible slimy reptilian monsters emerging from the primordial depths to wreak mindless death and destruction. 

A fair description of Mosley and his anti-semitic cretins, but what did the Mail have to say about the creature in the Scottish loch?

The Mail had nicked some of its story from the Inverness Courier, which the year before was the first to report on the loch monster with an article headlined “Strange Spectacle on Loch Ness.” 

The rest of its story and picture it bought from a prominent London gynaecologist named Robert Kenneth Wilson. 

He wanted to remain anonymous and the picture was nicknamed the surgeon’s photograph.

The Daily Mail paid Wilson £100 for the picture (over £6,000 today) but he was later fined £1,000 (£60,000 today) by the British Medical Association for allowing his name to be associated with it.

In his story Wilson claimed to have been walking by the loch when he saw the creature break the surface. He hurriedly took four photos, only two of which came out and one of them was rather blurry.

Tales of a beast in the loch had first came to national prominence in 1933 when a new loch-side motor-road gave easy access to unrestricted views of the loch. 

One of the first sightings from the new road were from a couple named Spicer who reported seeing a 25-foot animal with a long neck crossing the road in front of their car before splashing into the loch.

The Daily Mail sent big-game hunter Duke Wetherell to investigate and, like many a good Mail reporter before and since, when he found no real evidence, he made some up. 

Using a hippo foot umbrella stand from his hotel, he made and photographed giant footprints in the loch-side mud. The Mail printed the pictures.

It has even been suggested that the Mail’s man, Wetherell, created a plastic head and neck and attached it to a toy submarine that much later proved to be the real object in the surgeon’s photograph printed on the front page of the Daily Mail.

The legend of a loch monster is an old one. A 7th-century book relates how St Columba told the legend of a man who had been attacked and killed by a water beast in Loch Ness.

Perhaps the commonest theory about the creature in the loch is that it is related to plesiosaurs, marine reptiles that existed in prehistoric times. No less a naturalist than Peter Scott held this view.

Since 1933 over 1,000 sightings have been recorded. Most are controversial, with much argument and debate about their veracity.

Many have been proved to be inert floating objects, seals, swimming deer and driftwood. Over the years many hoaxers have eventually come forward to admit their deceit.

One interesting theory is that many of the 1930s sightings were actually just elephants from one of the many touring circuses that were exercised in the loch. Swimming with their trunks out of the water they made some dramatic monster-like pictures.

A million people visit Loch Ness each year and nearly nine out of 10 say they are there to try to spot the monster. They put more than £25 million into the local economy. 

Despite all those visitors and despite the fact that virtually all of them today carry a high-definition camera, if only in their phone, there have been very few sightings and even fewer reliable photographs or film in recent years.

This summer a geneticist, Neil Gemmell from New Zealand, has put Nessie back in the news with his theory that she is a giant eel, either a single massive one or many eels crowded together.

Gemmell, a professor at the University of Otago, led a research team in examining DNA in 250 water samples from Loch Ness, and they claim they have ruled out a lot of possible explanations for what Nessie could be. 

The survey revealed DNA traces of more than 3,000 species living beside or in Loch Ness — including fish, deer, pigs, birds, humans and bacteria. 

They found no DNA that would theoretically match a prehistoric reptile’s, and no traces of more commonplace animals that could be mistaken for one, like sharks, catfish or sturgeons.

He also found no DNA from otters or seals, both of which are common in the loch. No reptile DNA at all was found in the survey but I have actually seen grass snakes swimming in the loch and with head out of the water looking like a miniature monster. 

Not surprisingly they did find eel DNA. Loch Ness has a huge population of eels but no evidence that they are any bigger than other eels. 

Gemmell claims, on what evidence he doesn’t say, that an extraordinarily long-lived eel could grow as long as 13 feet. 

One well-known hoax dumped a huge dead conger eel on the lochside. It didn’t fool anyone who knew the conger is a salt water fish and the loch is fresh water.  

So a giant eel is unlikely but anyway perhaps we need to look at the New Zealander’s real motivation. He told the media: “I am unashamedly using the monster as a way to attract interest so I can talk about the science I want to talk about.”

It seems to me that rather than getting a real Nessie into the media, this New Zealand professor wanted, and achieved, getting the name of Neil Gemmell into the headlines. 

Does Frosty have a better theory? Well I have taken the advice of a real expert and, if pushed, I’d put my money on a member of the cryptobranchidae family — more commonly known as giant salamanders.

The Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus) can reach a length of nearly two metres (6ft 6in), is fat and lumpy, black in colour and lives in deep freshwater lakes, only coming to the surface very infrequently. That description matches many of Nessie’s reported sightings. 

The new survey didn’t look for giant salamander DNA. It should have found DNA from the salamander’s tiny relative, the newt. All three species of British newt live in Loch Ness. 

Whatever the large beast is, or was, there is a very good chance that, like any tiny population in a remote and isolated location, it must be under great threat of extinction.

So with the lack of recent sightings it may be that the last specimen of whatever it was is lying rotting at the bottom of the loch and, as that is 755ft (230m) down, we’ll probably never know for sure.

I am sure that won’t stop many people heading for Loch Ness for many years to come. The monster-based huge and profitable Loch Ness tourist business will see to that.  

Nor will it stop many other theories, scientific or outlandish, keeping Loch Ness, its incredible wildlife, and even professors who travel 11,000 miles and halfway round the globe from New Zealand featuring in the headlines.