The headquarters of Joe Weston-Webb’s portable flooring empire is protected by security fencing, motion-sensor lights and CCTV cameras.

None of these conventional measures has deterred arsonists, however, and in desperation, Mr Weston-Webb has now fortified his defences with less orthodox technology left over from his time as a travelling showman.

A 30ft Roman catapult, loaded with chicken droppings from a nearby farm is primed each evening. And a cannon, which Mr Weston-Webb once used to shoot his wife across the River Avon, will fire a railway sleeper if triggered by an intruder.

Mr Weston-Webb was yesterday erecting a sign outside his business, which stands at the end of a farm track in the lower valley of the River Soar in Nottinghamshire – a place known locally as Soar Bottom. It reads: “Warning: These premises are protected by smart-poo and railway sleeper projectiles.”

He told The Times: “I have an exploding coffin too. The intruder would have to climb into the box in order to be blown out of it and I don’t expect anyone would be stupid enough to do that, but I’m working on it.”

Mr Weston-Webb, 70, fears that his company, Grumpy Joe’s Flooring, has been a target for rivals in the portable flooring industry ever since it won a lucrative contract to supply the BBC show Strictly Come Dancing.

In the early hours of February 2 arsonists started a fire that caused £2,000 worth of damage. On the same night, four cars outside his daughter’s house had their tyres slashed and windows smashed.

“My daughter lives 12 miles away,” he said. “It’s too much of a coincidence. We are pretty certain it was a rival company, but I can’t prove it.”

He says he did not build up his flooring business in order to let his rivals walk all over him, nor have years arranging to fire his wife, Mary, over rivers in cannon and catapults left him shy of other experiments.

“She’s 54 now and far too big to fit into the cannon in any case,” he said.

Mrs Weston-Webb was one of Mr Weston-Webb’s squad of “Moto-Birds”, travelling the world driving motorcycles and cars over ramps and water features. While injured with a broken arm, she climbed into the catapult her husband is now employing to defend his warehouses, before an expectant crowd of 30,000. “I flew across 160ft of the Avon,” she said. “Unfortunately the net was set at an angle and I bounced into the river.”

Mrs Weston-Webb stood by her husband as he attempted to build a car with wings that would fly from the edge of a quarry (it didn’t) and a ramp that would take a double-decker bus across the Avon.

And she stands by his decision to lay booby-traps. “We just feel so helpless,” she said.

Nottinghamshire Police said yesterday that they would send an officer to offer advice on “conventional security techniques” and on the use of “reasonable force”. Mr Weston-Webb promises to be reasonable. “We are putting a rubber block on the end of the railway sleeper,” he said. “It should just knock an intruder down.”

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