SCIENCE: Bookies cut odds on Nessie

Bookmakers yesterday slashed the odds on the Loch Ness monster emerging from its lair by the end of 1997. News of the discovery of a deep underwater cavern in the loch sent Ladbrokes into a panic, cutting its odds on the discovery of the monster this year by a third.

George Edwards, a 44-year-old Nessie-watcher from Drumnadrochit, on the shore of the Loch, revealed yesterday that he had known about the cavern for a week. In the topsy-turvy world of pre-millennium, pre-election Britain, the bookies are taking no chances and responded as if Edwards had happened upon a footprint of the monster itself, slashing the odds from 150-1 to a measly 100-1. Last night an Aberdeen underwater survey company offered to spend pounds 10,000 on filming the cavern, using technology devised for the North Sea oil industry. Ian Burrell