THE first sandwich was eaten 250 years ago so a card game wasn’t interrupted.

John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, was playing cards and didn’t want to break away from the game and leave the table so he ordered a servant to bring him something to eat.

He asked for beef between slices of bread. His chums thought this a spiffing idea.

“I’ll have the same as Sandwich,” one said – and the first fast-food born.

The birth of the buttie has just been celebrated by the town of Sandwich in Kent. When the Earl ate the first one by picking it up in his fingers, he went against all dining etiquette. Food was always eaten with cutlery. At least among the upper crust.

“What you have with the sandwich is the shock of informality,” says food expert Sam Bompas. “He was a daring man to eat in such a way coming from his social background.”

Of course, the sandwich had probably been scoffed by poor people, who might not have had cutlery, for generations without anyone giving it a name.

I mean, it wouldn’t have had the same impact if bargeman Eli Wattle of Marsden had come up with the idea after a hard day on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal.

“What do you want to eat, our Eli?”

“I’ll have sliced turnip in some bread.”

“Eh, that sounds grand. We’ll call at an Eli Wattle.”

Not the same, you see, which is why the name never caught on.

Those first sandwiches were simple affairs. Not so these days. And possibly the worst place in the world to order a sandwich is America. Nothing is plain. Even the simplest sandwich requires ancillary questions. They all come with stuff.

“You want fries with that?”

And for goodness sake don’t accept salad because then they want to know what salad dressing and pride themselves on having hundreds with each more unpalatable than the last.

Last year I was in a lunch queue in a popular sandwich bar in Seattle and all I wanted was a cheese and tomato sandwich. A chap stood behind the counter with racks of different breads and trays of different ingredients and two dozen different cheeses.

I negotiated the bun and the cheese and tomato and just to make sure there would be no complication I said: “Hold everything else.”

Wow, I thought, I had done it. And then he asked what coffee I wanted and this in a country where Starbucks prides itself on being able to conjure thousands of different combinations from machiatto to peppermint mocha twist.

“A bottle of water,” I said.

America ruins food and if it isn’t on the menu, don’t ask. I am frequently reminded of the famous scene in Five Easy Pieces when Jack Nicholson just wants toast and it isn’t on the menu.

“I’d like an omelette, plain, and a chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast – no mayonnaise, no butter, no lettuce. And a cup of coffee.”

And the waitress says: “A number two chicken salad sandwich. Hold the butter, the lettuce, the mayonnaise, and a cup of coffee. Anything else?”

“Yeah, now all you have to do is hold the chicken, bring me the toast, give me a check for the chicken salad sandwich and you haven’t broken any rules.”

Needless to say. He didn’t get the toast.

Americans can’t even get a burger right. They always come full of salad and pickles and mayonnaise.

The best burger I ever had from a fast food outlet was back in the early 1960s at The Wimpy Bar in Manchester’s Oxford Street.

McDonalds didn’t enter the UK for another decade and Wimpy’s were the only burgers in town. They were served in toasted buns with only fried onion for garnish. Brilliant.

French sandwiches are great if you have a mouth the size of the Mersey tunnel. How else do you accommodate a baguette end on?

The worst sandwich I was ever offered was on a walk in the Dales with my friends Ratbag and Donkin.

At lunchtime we sat down and shared around what we had brought and Donkin produced cold boiled potato sandwiches. I’ll say that again – cold boiled potato sandwiches. There were no takers.

The greatest sandwich, of course, is the bacon buttie which is a frequent lifesaver the morning after the night before.

And this is not just my opinion. Researchers from Newcastle University’s Centre for Life found that the protein in the bacon and carbohydrates in the bread speeds up the metabolism and helps the body get rid of a hangover.

I’m an expert at making these – either in a fresh teacake with tomato ketchup, toast with lettuce and tomato or, for a change, stuffed into a toasted pita bread.

Food of the gods.

What are your best and worst sandwich experiences? Plain brown email to the usual address.