Picture a one-armed South Bank street performer juggling pumpkins while being sprayed from the Thames by a naked Duke of Edinburgh skidding by on a jet ski and you can begin to appreciate my astonishment upon seeing an elegant Knightsbridge woman walk out of  O’Shea’s of Knightsbridge butcher shop without one of its incomparable pork belly sandwiches in her possession. “Is that the queue?” she whined towards the single line of 5 or 6 punters ogling the platter of fat-glistening pork belly. She was outta there within seconds, sans un sandwich au poitrine du porc.

How, I wondered later, could anyone get so close to that sandwich yet walk away empty-handed? I tried my very best to put myself in her Christian Louboutins and soon felt a great wave of sympathy wash over me: It wasn’t the 3-minute queue that put her off. Rather, it was the startling indifference of the scoundrels on it. My own misbehaviour, I would, if given the chance, assure her, was due less to bad manners than cowardice: I hated to think of the mean looks the other blokes would have shot at me had I, the first on the queue, let her pass ahead of me and therefore them, too. This was not the moment to make nice like Mr Knightley.

When the uninitiated are asked by an O’Shea’s butcher which of the available sandwich accessories – English mustard, apple sauce, rocket (arugula), etc.– they want on their pork belly they can be forgiven for thinking they actually have a choice. In reality the only thinkable option is, (D), all of the above. You would have to bring together David Crosby, Steven Stills, Art Garfunkel, Brian Wilson and Stuart Murdoch in their respective primes to record lush harmonies comparable to those in that sandwich. The condiments melt into the succulent pieces of meat within the warm embrace of the oven-fresh baguette.  And lest the ensemble become too mushy there is the percussive crunch of delectable cracking cut into long, thick strips to break the melody line –  and possibly your incisors, too.

Sadly the pork belly baguette is not a daily lunch affair. Darragh O’Shea rotates his sandwich meats to, as the sign says, “mix things up and keep you happy :)” Keep you happy? Apparently they are unaware of the anguish felt when walking out of this Knightsbridge butcher shop without a pork belly baguette.

11 Monpelier Street, Knightsbridge, SW7  (see map) – 020 75817771