First originated (IIRC) in
Garfield strips, where I for one had absolutely no idea what it meant.
So I was a
slow kid,
leave me alone.
Quickly adopted by Amiga Power (The Magazine Of Champions), where ignorant readers would occasionally write in to guess at its meaning. This prompted much derision from the demi-gods that worked there. Natch.
Anyway. Someone eventually wrote in to enlighten the proles:
"Natch means naturally. Natch."
And that was that. Thus concludes Natch History 101, class dismissed.
You know, it kind of makes sense that such a
hep word came from some
crazy hepcat, rather than
Garfield. But anyway, now my
ignorance of hep is exposed. Hooray!