Loch Ness Monster Explained

Chapter 9c - MY MONSTER - Cruel Betrayal

Ronnie Bremner was actually more amenable to providing the sonar machine to Adrian Shine than I had imagined. They had a meeting in London late in 1980 and the deal was done. Adrian took delivery of a Feruno Scanning Sonar and Colour Video Sounder which he was to link up in a rather innovative manner. It is unfortunate that this meant I earned virtually nothing in 1981 as the scanning sonar would absorb most of the profits from the exhibition for that year. I was to survive on only £50 per week throughout that second and third season because of this, but I still felt it was the right decision at the time.

Not only that, but during that first season I had started to feel rather guilty about the exhibition business being split 50/50. After all, I had only done the research and put in the intellectual property. Ronnie had provided buildings for the business to rent, the capital and had taken all of the financial risk. I remember going to Ronnie and offering to have my share reduced from 50% to 25%. He agreed. Nevertheless, 25% of our successful business would secure our future. I was never a greedy individual.

In the end analysis, the grant we were to provide to the Loch Ness Project for the scanning sonar was not going to come out of the first year's accounts* so there was a £5,000 profit for the year. During a meeting with the accountant, Ronnie suggested that I be given a 10% bonus. I was deeply shocked and immediately protested that I should have 25% as agreed. Ronnie backtracked quickly and just over £1,000 was added to my next drawings. This unexpectedly reduced offer started me having some real concerns over the relationship.

Things were only to get worse. The Highlands and Islands Development Board had offered a grant towards the production of the exhibition and Ronnie was now pushing to obtain this money. Things were dragging on into 1981 and to finally obtain payment, the HIDB had insisted on seeing a contract between the exhibition and me. I knew the solicitor was drawing up the contract and expected it to give me 25% of the ownership of the operating company which Ronnie and I had agreed.

When I arrived at the solicitors' office with Ronnie that day and read through the contract I discovered that I was just a manager and that I would only receive 25% of the profits for the period of five years or until I left. My intellectual property and input into the business was to be completely ignored. I was to own absolutely nothing.

I refused to sign and walked out, only to be followed down the stairs by Ronnie who told me to sign the agreement or be dismissed there and then with nothing.

Furious I wandered the streets of Inverness for more than an hour, went to see my own solicitor, now changed, who was most unhelpful. I even spoke in confidence to one of the advisers at the HIDB who said they could do nothing to help, but that they had also been concerned about the relationship and that was why they had insisted on seeing an agreement in order to safeguard me.

Some safeguard that turned out to be. I was to lose my rightful share of the business I had conceived, researched and set up and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. Either I signed the agreement and forfeited my rights or I didn't sign and would be sacked. The latter course of action would force me to try to fight it through the courts with no resources and no income, and the inevitable bitterness which would result would make it impossible for us to ever work together again. An intolerable situation.

How could I have been so stupid as not to have insisted on the agreement at the very beginning? The old axiom, "always put it in writing" could never have been more relevant.

Ronnie said he never intended for me to have part of the business, but that is not true. We had agreed 50% each and now, through my own personal stupidity I had reduced this to 25%, and it was now to be only of the profits for five years and only while I was employed there. A future which was supposed to be secure was now just a job.

The exhibition was my intellectual property, my design, my text, my whole concept. How could anyone believe that I did that for anything other than a share of the business?

With regard to the profits, Ronnie and accountants were able to manipulate them to be as low as possible. On no occasion did I earn over £10,000 per annum from the Loch Ness Exhibition. He was even paying his hotel manager more money than me and it was my brainchild which was generating vast income for the shops, restaurant and hotel, all benefiting from the numbers of people MY exhibition was bringing onto the site.

Not only this, but he had taken offence at my dissatisfaction and in small, and not always subtle ways, he began making my life as difficult as possible. He told friends that he "owned" me, was rude about me to Wendy He even threatened to have my bank accounts closed and demeaned me to friends and colleagues at every opportunity.

What had I done to deserve this? Reader, always get it put in writing. Don't ever trust anyone in matters of business. I made the Bremner family very wealthy and yet, since 1990, have had to work all the hours under the sun, to the detriment of my health, to earn a living which should have been mine by right for life.

In 2007 a chance meeting with the ex-wife of one of Ronnie Bremner's closest business contacts heaped up more pain on this injury for she told me that her husband had found out about the contract I had been forced to sign that week and told her, "Ronnie Bremner has stitched up Tony Harmsworth".

I had hoped that Ronnie might make some sort of financial gesture to us for retirement in his last few months of life, but he never made contact#.

* It is only relatively recently that Adrian Shine discovered that I had personally financed 25% of the cost of this sonar from my share of the profits.

# Ronald Bremner died in 2001 aged 59 and the centre is now run by his eldest son and owned by his wife. It has continued to develop since I left in 1990.

(C) 2018 Tony Harmsworth