IN June 1978, most Sotonians thought it was safe to go back in to the water, some three years after Steven Spielberg’s Blockbuster ‘Jaws’ had put the frighteners up cinemagoers.

However there was a shock for those steering well clear of the beaches thirty-seven years ago this month, as unsuspecting city shoppers discovered to their horror that one of the monsters of the ocean had somehow turned up in the centre of Southampton.

According to the Echo reports of the time, it was a fairly quiet Saturday lunchtime on the "Echo" newsdesk when all of a sudden three young men hurried into the front office, with the startling news: "There's a Shark in the fountain at the Rose Gardens!" And, as unbelievable as it sounded, they were right!

Thankfully for those nearby the toothy terroriser wasn’t alive and tormenting passing shoppers, but dead and lying on its side at the bottom of the fountain. One of the lads—who swore they had nothing to do with the shark-lark—waded into the fountain in his motorcycle boots, and after gingerly nudging the creature with his foot, he hauled it out by the tail.

It turned out to be about four and a half foot long and somewhat smelly, and immediately generated much discussion as passers-by pondered as to whether the creature was a shark or perhaps a tope.

But the one mystery that nobody at the time could fathom was how the fishy fiend managed to get into the fountain at all.