A Sheringham man has challenged the recent claim by scientists at the Cern Hadron Collider laboratory that they were the first to discover the so-called “God particle” – the Higgs boson.

Walter Smith of Britons Lane, an inventor and self-taught physicist, has caused controversy before when he challenged the current work on string theory.  At the time he said: “My binder twine theory has already reconciled general relativity and quantum mechanics.  They can finish their work now as I have all the answers.”

Mr Smith has also claimed to be the first to put forward chaos theory as a serious proposition.  “I walked into my shed one day and it just came to me in a flash”, he said.

This latest claim about the discovery of the Higgs boson particle was made after the Cern claim was made public.  An angry Mr Smith said: “I don’t know how they have the cheek?  I discovered the Higgs boson back in March when I conducted the experiment in my shed.  I rang Dr Brian Cox at the time and he was going to pass it on to Professor Stephen Hawking.  All that money they spent and all I used was an old spin drier motor, some magnets out of my loudspeakers and some Marley plastic downpipe.  I accelerated the particles using my shotgun and the equipment did the rest.  I knew it was the Higgs boson straightaway because it blew a hole in the side of the shed and killed two of my chickens.”

No one at the Cern laboratory was available for comment.