People have been eating slices of meat in bread since Neolithic times but it was not until John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, felt peckish whilst playing cards that this foodstuff acquired its name. Rather than eat meat with his bare hands (as the story goes) Montagu felt the addition of bread would keep the cards free of grease. Evidently the fork, commonplace throughout Western Europe since the 10th century, was a solution beyond the wit of 18th century aristocracy. Eating meat with bare hands indeed – what would his mum say!

I've always thought that our American cousins understand the sandwich better than most. I learnt this in Bloomington Indiana in the mid-80s. At lunchtime, the entire office would parade down to Dagwood’s, a tiny basement shop down a rickety iron staircase, where they produced sandwiches unlike any I had ever seen growing up in Doncaster. Each was made to order so it took a few minutes. In any case, the queue stretched up the stairs. And they were worth the wait. Slices of mozzarella, provolone, salami and roast beef formed a platform upon which to pile lettuce, tomatoes, pickled gherkins, olives, chillies, peppers, and ranch dressing. If you ordered ‘to go’, the entire structure was tightly wrapped in foil, producing a final product that was shaped like a rugby ball and with more chrome than a 1958 Cadillac. Watching Carl, a steroid-fuelled linebacker moonlighting with us over the summer, address a Dagwood’s sub was like seeing an anaconda swallow a sheep. I swear he could dislocate his lower jaw. Lord Sandwich would have been dead impressed.

Other than the fact that the Dagwood’s sub was called a sandwich, you would struggle to recognise any familial similarity with Lord Montagu's grease sponge or the sarnies that my mother gave me for my school lunch. I always feel sorry for Americans visiting London. In the same way that I was overwhelmed by the US version of the sandwich, Americans must be bewildered by what passes for a sandwich on this side of the pond. A slice of processed ham, the thickness of a microscopy specimen, between two slices of steam baked white loaf must seem at best a poor joke if not a downright insult. But then in Britain, a sandwich is an apology -- a way of saying "I'm not really hungry but I suppose I'd better eat something”. And if you eat anything with that attitude, you deserve it to face disappointment. In America, the sandwich says “Boy am I hungry!”

But if we accept for a second that the sandwich is a British invention, it all makes sense. Because I can't help thinking that the sandwich is rather like football. Basically we, that is the British, invent the thing and, while sitting on our laurels, fail to notice that everyone else in the world is getting better at it. Then before we know it, everyone else's sandwiches are better than our own. We are no longer in the premiership. Over the centuries we have gradually slipped out of the sandwich elite. Thank goodness there is no Sandwich World Cup.

I'm glad to say that my time in the States imbued me with a genuine grasp of what a sandwich could be, a sense of sandwich adventure if you will. My friend Werner had a very simple definition. If the sandwich would fit through a letterbox, it wasn't a sandwich worthy of the name. Certainly there was no way a Dagwoods Hoosier Deli Sub would go through a letterbox. It was difficult enough getting it through a door.

The wife says I eat too much bread generally and harps on about types of carbohydrate. Apparently there are good and bad sorts of carbs. Something to do with glycaemic index or similar (actually I should get her to write this part, she is a diabetes nurse). And my sandwiches are invariably always made with the wrong sort of bread. So before I have even opened the fridge door, my sandwich has not even made it past the blueprint stage without comment. And let's not forget, this is just a sandwich not a new supersonic airliner. Two slices of bread -- how can that be bad?

I've always been fond of sandwiches -- in my view, they represent a blank canvas. A chance for the sandwich artist to express himself with imaginative ingredients as an artist would use pigments. When I was a kid, there was no ingredient combination that I would not try. Whatever was in the fridge was fair game. Double and even triple decker sandwiches overflowing with creativity and ketchup. Ok it was not exactly the Sistine Chapel roof but then if Michelangelo had run your local Subway, who knows. I even gave the sandwiches names, recalling our holiday in New York in 1966. The "Salami Surprise", "Cheese Squeeze" and “Ham Slam” were self-explanatory.

But all this talk of sandwiches makes me hungry. Time to renew my acquaintance with "The Beast" ...