HOT on the heels of the General Election, we had something infinitely more exciting to get our teeth into.

Last week was British Sandwich Week, the perfect time to celebrate this great English invention.

It may seem an unlikely subject to fill a column, but sandwiches are a major part of my life. I spend most evenings making packed lunches for my daughters.

Time after time, they tell me what they like and dislike, but I forget and every night I ask them: “Do you want ham on its own or with lettuce and tomato or just lettuce, or just tomato?”

I know it sounds like I’m pandering to them, but if they don’t like them they don’t eat them, in spite of my “eat what you are given” rants, and lectures on Third World famine.

I’ve never been a great sandwich maker. Some people can throw a load of ingredients at two hunks of bread and make it look amazingly creative and hugely appetising.

Crucially, they somehow make it all stick together and stand proud. No matter what ingredients I stick in mine, they end up collapsing like the leaning tower of Pisa, looking ragged and messy around the edges.

Making sandwiches is an art that not many people manage to perfect. I remember the cricket teas I ate as a child, with cheap white bread smeared with a paper-thin layer of egg or – a cricket tea favourite – potted meat paste. And friends’ parties were as bad, with limp buns plastered with meat or fish paste.

The sandwiches of my youth were nothing like those of today. BLT was unheard of, there was no prawn mayonnaise or chicken Caesar salad, not even tuna sweetcorn. I don’t remember any sandwich shop (or any type of take-away other than fish and chips), only the revolting selection in cafes and service stations, sweating in cling film.

Now every high street has them, with dozens of varieties.

At home we often ate tomato sandwiches for tea. You rarely hear of them now, although my 93-year-old neighbour swears by them and eats them with sugar.

And we also enjoyed jam, which is also very tasty and easy to make, but for some reason is nowadays unthinkable as a lunchbox sandwich of choice. My dad still loves jam sandwiches and often chooses them for lunch or tea in preference to anything else.

With the picnic season approaching, I’m gearing up for a summer of sandwich-making. Tuna salad on crusty white, with a sprinkling of wind-blown sand – what could be nicer?

And all because, in 1762, the Earl of Sandwich demanded that his food be served between slices of bread so he could carry on playing cards.