Bookmaker William Hill is enlisting festival goers attending the two-day event in what they call the largest ever organised attempt to prove the existence of the Loch Ness Monster.

Thousands of cameras will be distributed to the music fans — with up to 35,000 expected to attend Saturday and Sunday's event — who will be offered a £1 million incentive by William Hill to find evidence which will finally persuade the Natural History Museum to admit that Nessie is flesh and blood and not a myth.

The bookmaker has teamed up with the organisers of the music festival at Dores in an effort to produce proof of the existence of Nessie.

Company spokesman Rupert Adams hoped the £1 million bounty would help solve one of the greatest mysteries of modern times.

"This is a great opportunity with such huge crowds on the shores of Loch Ness and it will be fantastic if someone can get a picture with one of the thousands of Nessie-Snappers cameras we are handing out, that can rival the 'Surgeon's photograph', which is still the most recognised despite being taken over 50 years ago," he said.

Though the most iconic image of Nessie, the "Surgeon's photograph" was confirmed as a hoax in the 1990s. Festival-goers need not take a more truthful photograph to be in the money as William Hill is also offering consolation prizes including £1000 and a free £250 bet for the best photographic evidence "real or staged".

To qualify for the bounty, all evidence must be gathered over the RockNess weekend and must be submitted to William Hill prior to noon on Monday 18th June.

The Natural History Museum has issued guidelines on what might constitute a monster, warning that it cannot promise to identify photographs, sonar traces, written descriptions or other forms of indirect evidence, although would be interested in seeing them, and though it hopes to be able to detect most hoaxes, the museum cannot guarantee to identify all fragments and would not regard a determination of "animal bone, unidentifiable" as positive indication of a monster.

"The Natural History Museum is unsure as to what might constitute a 'monster'," the guidelines conclude.

"Though it might define it as a species hitherto unknown to science or widen the definition to include species previously known as fossils."

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