'In 2004, £499 million was spent on sausages.'

October 30 to November 5 is British Sausage Week. Andrew Chapman packs in some meaty facts to whet your appetite

The focus of the week is the 'Hunt for the Supreme Sausage Sarnie' - "Open to everyone who thinks their sausage sarnie is the tastiest, biggest, most unusual or wackiest."

Details are at the Meat Matters website, and the hunt is led by the, er, distinguished figure of Carol Thatcher.

The week is also helping to support the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. They're working with the Design a Sausage competition - every order placed at the Design a Sausage website, which sells sausage-making kits, will gain the trust £1.

If you're really keen, you can join the British Sausage Appreciation Society, which has come up with a number of sausage sarnie recipes of its own.

It has more than 7,000 members. Look out for its British Sausage Week roadshow, too, which will be visiting London, Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, Birmingham and Bristol.

There are more recipes at the Sausage Fans website, and at Sausage Links you can find all manner of sausagey resources - including links to specialist sausage producers, and a chance to vote for Britain's Best Banger.

More than 470 recipes and flavours for sausages have been identified in Britain.

Origins

Where did the sausage come from, though? The name is derived from the Latin for 'salted', and they were mentioned way back more than 2,500 years ago in Homer's Odyssey (warning: contains goat), though are actually believed to date back more than 5,000 years to ancient Sumeria - now Iraq.

By 900BC, they were sold from the aisles at Greek amphitheatres. In 320AD, sausages were persecuted by the emperor Constantinus and the Church for having pagan associations, but they couldn't be stamped out.

No less than King Henry V once said: "War without fire is as worthless as sausages without mustard."

Queen Victoria insisted on hand-chopped bangers - oh, but the name 'bangers' only came in the Second World War - sausages at the time contained so much water that they often exploded when fried.

Sausages are as popular as ever today: 88% of British households have bought them in the last year.

In 2004, £499 million was spent on sausages. Every day, 5 million Britons will eat them. Grilling is the most popular cooking method used for 44% of all sausages followed by frying at 23% and baking at 20%.

The world's longest sausage was made in October 2000 during a previous British Sausage Week (this year's is the 9th) and was 35 miles long - it weighed 15.5 tonnes.

The most expensive sausage in the UK is made from fillet steak with champagne and truffles - they cost £20 each.

You can find local butchers online, as well as organic suppliers from The Soil Association. Enjoy!