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Cleaning up: Nick Grey, who poses with his cordless invention the Gtech, is the new James Dyson

Rumour has it that it's practically impossible to get into the Dyson headquarters without myriad levels of security clearance.

So secretive has the high-powered (in every sense) world of vacuum cleaners become that fear of espionage is rife.

Dyson employees must use a fingerprint scanner to enter the building and, even then, access to most research areas is only for a select few.

So when the man tipped as the next James Dyson leaps in front of me as I reach for a door handle inside his domestic appliance empire, it's not a surprise.

'I'll need to get that,' says Nick Grey.

Of course, he will. Are we talking fingerprints here, too? Eyeball scanning? Am I going to be denied access until I swear not to divulge suction secrets to the Russians?

Well, no. It's turns out we are just talking a temperamental door.

'It's a bit stiff,' he says cheerily, yanking it open. Welcome to the surprisingly low-tech world of Gtech, the little vacuum cleaner company that is taking on the big boys of dust-busting.

Have you even heard of Gtech? Well, it is short for Grey Technologies, a name which even Mr Grey, 45, admits doesn't have the pizazz of Dyson.

'It's not a very good name, is it?' he frowns. 'But I couldn't think of anything. People don't know how to pronounce it. Our customers phone up and say "I need a battery for my Getch".'

All of which makes the success of Gtech's flagship product, a lightweight cordless vacuum cleaner called the AirRam, even more unlikely.

The AirRam may look unprepossessing, and its inventor admits that it was designed with the elderly market in mind.

'The first customers were in the over-80 age bracket,' he nods.

But, as unlikely as it sounds, this machine has been, er, wiping the floor with the opposition with 32,000 of them flying off the shelves every month.

And their fans love them. Not least because of their clever internal compression technology which crunches all the dirt into solid little bales which you simply tip out into the bin. 

The bales are made - in rather revolutionary fashion - just a few centimetres from where the dust and dirt enters the machine, rather than having to travel through reams of tubing. The absence of both bag and miles of tubes makes for a superlight machine too.

Grey proudly shows how the AirRam can be carried with just one finger. He is, however, reluctant to reveal how he makes the bales of dirt, concerned as he is about competitors copying his technology.

In the year to date, he says, the AirRam has outsold every rival cordless product. Gtech is now making lavish claims about it being the UK's best-selling vacuum cleaner by value - hotly disputed by Dyson, of course.

Sir James Dyson - the man who changed the face of the entire industry - is certainly familiar with Gtech.

Last year, his company took the extraordinary step of taking full page adverts in national newspapers, claiming that Dyson's sleek (and much sexier, it has to be said) cordless model, the DC59 Animal, boasted ten times as much suction as the AirRam. It was akin to Goliath inviting David to a duel.

Dyson was also quick to pounce when Gtech insisted that their product was superior. It complained to Advertising Standards Authority, which upheld eight of the nine complaints and forced Gtech to change some wording on its adverts.

Techy: Mr Grey's vacuum empire is run from his farmhouse near Worcester

'Yes, it was extraordinary to have the big boys come after us,' admits Mr Grey. 'Maybe we were a bit naïve about the wording. It never occurred to us that every word would be scrutinised by teams of lawyers.'

Vacuum cleaning companies have teams of lawyers?

'Oh yes, Dyson have about 20, 17 in house.'

And how many do you have? 'None.'

Although the company launched in 2001, it's only in the past three years that Gtech has come out of the shadows. Last year it had a £20million turnover. Next year's predicted turnover, says Mr Grey, is £40million.

So can you smell the success at company HQ yet? Frankly, no. All you can smell is manure because Gtech is situated on a farm near the village of North Piddle in Worcestershire.

Fifty cows stare at me as I pick my way across the yard. My mucky shoes are greeted with whoops of delight when I get inside, however.

Lightweight: The AirRam is so light it can be lifted with a single finger - a fact of which Mr Grey is undeniably proud

'We love muck. One of the advantages of being out in the country is that people are always treading in some sort of goo,' says Mr Grey, getting down on the floor to examine exactly what type of dirt it is (there are infinite varieties).

Obviously, they do pay people to tread muck professionally. At the back of one barn is a scene which could have come straight from a Heath Robinson cartoon.

Three menacing-looking vacuum cleaners are held in place over a revolving conveyor belt of carpet to test their performance. They turn on automatically for 14 ½ minutes, rest for 30 seconds, then turn themselves on again. All day and all night. Grey looks at them as one would gambolling lambs.

Gtech still feels very much like the sort of business that was started in someone's garage - which it was.

Even now the products are likely to be tested by Grey asking his mother's friends to 'give them a whirl'.

'Yeah, you can have all the lab testing in the world, but you can't beat trying a prototype out in someone's home, with real dirt and dogs and children and mess.'

So his home - he has four young kids - is presumably spotless?  'That's the trouble. I test them so much we don't have enough dirt! You need a few days build-up.

We haven't got a dog, unfortunately, so I've been known to stop people walking by my house with their dog to say "Can I come and clean your house?"

'Most people like it - once I've explained. They don't think I'm barmy, no, not really. I mean I don't sneak into their houses at night, doing guerrilla cleaning.'

Don't be fooled, though. This is not someone who has stumbled into success. Nick Grey's rise has been methodical and determined.

He wasn't born with a burning desire to design vacuum cleaners. He left school with just two O-levels and got a job with leading vacuum maker Vax, which was where his love affair with appliances started.

'I went in at the lowest level. It was my job to set up the lab for testing, get the dirt and spread it around, then clear up afterwards. I'd watch the engineers and think "I want to do that".'

He progressed up the company, first getting his hands on 'actual exciting machines', then becoming involved in the design process.

Powerful: Gtech's range has prompted a vigorous response from industry giants Dyson

After 12 years, he was running the engineering department, and studying for an Open University degree in his spare time.

'I think quite early on I knew that one day I'd go out on my own. I did have big ideas that weren't necessarily wanted. I wanted to go down the cordless route, but they weren't interested.'

He was at Vax, at a lowly level, circa 1993, when James Dyson burst onto the scene. There was a bit of hero worship going on there. 

'To give him credit, Dyson completely transformed the industry. People like me see him as a father figure.' Ouch.

It has been said that Dyson made vacuum cleaners sexy. He laughs. 'I don't know about that, but he certainly made them trendy.'

Dyson say they have 'very simply illustrated the difference between our technology and Gtech's' and that 'they are the market leader in cordless vacuum cleaners'.

Sadly, the home-spun appeal of Gtech may not last. Plans are in place for a move to new custom-built premises.

'Possible': Mr Grey has even floated the return of the vacuum bag in the near future for Gtech

He likes to cite Gtech as a great British success story, but the reality is that his cleaners are produced in China, as per the industry standard.

'The fact is that you just can't do it here and be cost-effective. I couldn't have started a production line in the UK. It would have cost me a quarter of a million pounds. There was no way I had that amount of money.

'In China, I did it for £60,000. Obviously the dream would be to bring production over here, but realistically, it can't happen soon.'

So what innovations are we going to see over the next few years in the vacuum cleaning world? The word from James Dyson is that robots are the Next Big Thing.

Grey is more, well, grey, about what is to come. Cordless is the future, he believes but he hints that his company is also looking into bringing back the vacuum cleaner bag - the very thing James Dyson famously ditched.

Isn't that going backwards? 'No, the thing is that bag worked, it was getting hold of the bags that was the issue.'

So, we've gone from bagless to cordless, but now we may be heading into bagged-and-cordless territory? 'I can't say too much but it's possible.'

And what about the true holy grail of vacuums - the one that picks the Lego out of the damn machine itself, then makes a nice cup of tea and gets on with the ironing?

'Ah, we are working on that one,' he says. 'But it may be a while.'