In a recent game around my dinner table, my wife was challenged to invent a product which would appeal to football fans. Her creation – a Furger – was deemed a great success which we all wanted to try.

The Furger was a football-shaped burger, with layers of different meat from the centre, fanning outwards to the traditional burger layer around the outside. It was a fantasy feast for fast-food junkies.

As we know, truth is normally stranger than fiction. Because while the Furger existed merely in our dreaks, the Hamdog is only too real. The brainchild of Australian Mark Murray, the Hamdog is a combined burger and hot dog, with the burger split to allow the hot dog to run through the middle of it, while it is all encased in a specially shaped bun to hold the meat and traditional salads and sauces.

The Hamdog has been patented, and despite Mr Murray’s lack of success on Shark Tank, the Australian equivalent of Dragons’ Den, he has now started selling them in Australia to both national and international attention.

From a linguistic point of view, it is not a surprise that Hamdog was eventually chosen as the appropriate term – I don’t think that Dogburger would have fared quite so well. And while I am no gastronomy expert and therefore cannot predict whether the Hamdog is short-term sensation or long-term fast-food fixture, it would be great if it heralded a new era of combined foodstuffs with names we can all enjoy. Jerk Tikka Masala, Bangers and Squeak, Lemon Meringue Alaska – the possibilities are endless.

My only hope though would be that people don’t try to combine sweet and savoury. For me, it never works. And I don’t want to imagine how a combination of Toad in the Hole and Spotted Dick might come out.