Beckingham Palace turned into a fortress

They may outwardly lead the most glamorous of lives, but David and Victoria Beckham live in a permanent state of fear for themselves and their two young children.

Since the couple married in July 1999, their increasingly stellar profile and estimated joint fortune of £25m have rendered them vulnerable. They have faced at least one kidnap plot and several murder threats.

Such is their anxiety, they have had their palatial home in Hertfordshire transformed, almost into a fortress. The £2.5m mansion, "Beckingham Palace", now has numerous closed circuit cameras, a 24-hour security patrol and guard dogs, and a high perimeter wall topped with razor wire.

So seriously has Beckham taken threats, last March he paid a reported £160,000 for a bullet-proof Mercedes with inch-thick windows. He has also boosted his entourage of bodyguards, one of whom is a former SAS member.

More recently, he and his wife have hired extra bodyguards to look after their three-month-old son, Romeo, following threats to his elder brother, Brooklyn. They are said to have employed specialist security consultants to ensure there are no "blind spots" at their home where criminals might gain access.

There is good reason for the couple to be paranoid.

A little under three years ago they stayed at a safe house with Brooklyn, then an infant, after officers foiled a £1m conspiracy – said by police to have been orchestrated by "an underground crime figure" – to kidnap Victoria and the baby. Shortly afterwards Beckham narrowly escaped death – he found the brake cables on his £220,000 Ferrari had been cut.

There have been countless other incidents.

In May 2000, it emerged that Victoria had received a phone call from an anonymous man pledging to shoot her dead. The threat followed her receipt of a newspaper photograph of herself and her husband, on which a bullet was drawn pointing towards her bleeding head. A scrawled message on the picture reportedly read: "You fucking whore. You are going to get what's coming to you." The post is now carefully screened. Two years ago they received an envelope holdingbullets. A year previously, their former minder, Mark Niblett, was questioned by police over allegations that he sent them an intimidating letter.

The couple have also been stalked. Three years ago, 36-year-old Chinyela Obue was detained under the Mental Health Act after bombarding Beckham with saucy mail and breaking into the pair's flat.

Not all the threats alleged by the Beckhams have been taken at face value. In 1999 it was reported that a man tried to snatch Brooklyn as his parents left Harrods. However, in his book Posh and Becks their "unauthorised" biographer Andrew Morton saidthe pair invented the story to win sympathy during Beckham's trial for an alleged speeding offence. Morton's claim, fiercely denied by them, read: "Strangely, the incident was not captured on film either by the CCTV cameras ... or by the photographers within inches of the Mercedes."