Loch Ness Monster Explained

Chapter 20c - MY MONSTER - No Peace For The Wicked

During the last year of business at the Abbey, 1998, discussions with the Abbot about trying to boost takings to the maximum led to my designing yet another Loch Ness exhibition. We were to include this in the octagonal diorama room and it became known as the Loch Ness Diorama.

This gave me the opportunity to tell much of the story in this book to the public and it gave a degree of satisfaction to stage an exhibit which made the Loch Ness Centre exhibition out of date.

It opened to great acclaim. One long term monster researcher, Rip Hepple, a stalwart from the Loch Ness Phenomenon Investigation Bureau days, came out of the twelve minute show in tears, telling me, "You told my life story there."

When the monk Father Gregory Brusey saw it and the short sequences I used of him within it there was also a tear in his eye. I must admit to great satisfaction from having turned Nessie into such an emotive story.

Of course, at Drumnadrochit, Ronald Bremner was incandescent with rage. He had always told everyone he owned all the rights to everything to do with Loch Ness, but, of course, this was just one of his blustering bluffs, as was his claim that he 'owned me'. Suddenly, what he called 'the Official Loch Ness Exhibition' was firmly in second place with regard to accuracy.

Before I left the Loch Ness Centre in 1990, in my capacity as Managing Director, I signed a legally binding contract which gave the Loch Ness and Morar Project a royalty from the admissions. A great shame that I did not think of doing something similar for myself. When I left I received nothing – no severance pay, holiday pay, not even a leaving gift or 'Good Luck' card. What I did receive was a number of threats from Ronald Bremner that he'd get my bank accounts shut down and I'd never work again in the Highlands. I'm sure he tried, but his threats were hollow. When the tax men went after him in the late nineties, he stood in my garden with his wife, Libby, and told me, 'If I go down, you're going down with me!' The tax men, of course, were not that stupid.

However with me gone, Adrian was approached to look after the exhibition and he did keep an eye on things, but he was always somewhat aggrieved at my preventing him from presenting his full findings during the 1989 update. Ronald Bremner was paranoid at the time that telling the truth about the Surgeon's photograph would destroy the tourist industry and so I resisted too comprehensive a dismissal in the script. My business hat, self preservation hat and integrity hat all in conflict. You make these decisions when you have to and I know Adrian forgives me.

As the nineties progressed, the exhibition at Drumnadrochit ran into mechanical failures. I had designed it to run with tapes. Each tape contained a sound track for one of the seven themed areas and in addition it carried sound pulses which controlled the lights and other equipment. As each area's tape approached its end it would send a pulse to trigger the next area to begin.

Of course, as the equipment aged the tapes no longer functioned perfectly. The soundtracks were unaffected but lights came on and went off erratically. Worst of all, sometimes the pulse did not go to the next themed area and the general public would arrive in a silent dark area. They quickly got fed up and moved on to the next area, disrupting people's enjoyment there. By 1998 the breakdowns were sometimes occurring several times a day.

The opening of the Loch Ness Diorama in Fort Augustus Abbey that year was probably the final straw. Bremner no longer had any options. With full editorial and design control, Adrian Shine created the superb exhibit which stands there today and all credit to him.

I am glad that in some small way I was able to contribute to the improvement. Photographs of mine and video I took still form part of the new exhibition without acknowledgement. My intellectual property continued to be considered worthless by Ronald Bremner

When the Abbey closed, an opportunity arose to maybe put something similar to my diorama into the competing exhibition at the Loch Ness Lodge Hotel in Drumnadrochit. Relationships with the owner, Mr Donald Skinner, had improved from my days when I worked next door.

We were getting on very well, when the Loch Ness Centre suddenly made me an offer of free admissions for all of my tour passengers if I promised not to work for Mr Skinner. At the time Mr Skinner was procrastinating over the budget for improvements and so I accepted the Loch Ness Centre's offer although it turned out to be less permanent than I expected - like all things promised by the Bremners. They had failed to mention in our 'deal' that they were just about to set up tours which would be in indirect competition with me.

With the Abbey closed and me without an income yet again, I had to take stock of my situation once more.

(C) 2018 Tony Harmsworth