Businessman burgled after being banned from using giant catapult

An eccentric businessman who set up a 30ft dung-firing catapult on his land to deter intruders has been burgled after police warned him that it would be illegal for him to use the weapon. Joe Weston-Webb, a former travelling showman who also owns a human cannon and an "exploding coffin", decided to adopt such an unorthodox method of protecting his property last year after a series of break-ins and an arson attack.

The catapult, based on the design of a Roman boulder-throwing ballista, was originally built for a series of unsuccessful attempts to fire his wife, Mary, across the River Avon in 1976 during a colourful career as a stuntman. He gave up after one attempt in which she made it to the opposite bank only to be bounced back into the river by a safety net.

Mr Weston-Webb settled for a more mundane career in business after designing a type of click-together wooden flooring which earned him contracts with hotels and the entertainment industry. But following a series of attacks by vandals on his company, Grumpy Joe, in Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Notts, he restored the rusty catapult and equipped it to fire bags of chicken droppings at intruders if an alarm was triggered. He also spoke of loading his cannon with railway sleepers or adapting it to work like a laser gun.



His eccentric methods attracted media attention as well as a warning from Nottinghamshire Police that using the giant catapult would be illegal as it did not constitute "reasonable force". But now his business had been targeted by thieves again. Burglars vandalised his workshop and stole cutting equipment, a plasma screen television and a laptop among other goods during the break-in on Monday night.

Mr Weston-Webb estimates that the combined bill for damage and stolen property could amount to £10,000. He said: "It is ridiculous that we are in this situation now in which we can't defend ourselves," he said.

He is now threatening to ignore the warning and reactivate the catapult in the face of what he believes is a vendetta. "We've seen where listening to them gets you," he said. "They warned me off, and the result is that my business has been smashed to bits by yobs."