Food has provided a few laughs in the James Bond films. We can think of, for example, the bombe surprise in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), where the bombe is actually a bomb. Or there’s Q’s lunch in GoldenEye (1995). At the end of a briefing by Q (Desmond Llewelyn) in his lab, Bond (Pierce Brosnan) spots a filled baguette, picks it up and examines it, wondering what mystery gadget it conceals. Q snatches the baguette off him. ‘Don’t touch that!’, Q exclaims, as if Bond had been casually handling a deadly device, ‘that’s my lunch’.

In the novelisation of the film by John Gardner, the baguette is described as six or seven inches of a French stick, cut in two and filled with tuna, tomatoes and onions. If this was taken from the script, the catering company or prop team responsible for the sandwich can’t have read it very closely, because Q’s baguette seems much longer than six or seven inches. It also contains cucumber and lettuce, as well as tomatoes, but doesn’t appear to have any onions. It’s hard to see whether the baguette contains tuna, but as there’s no ham or other sliced meat protruding from the edges of the baguette, it’s entirely possible that it does.

Whatever its precise contents, a Q-style baguette is easy to make. Cut a generous length from a baguette or take a half baguette. Slice it in half lengthwise from the side, butter the halves and spread tuna (mixed with mayonnaise if wished) onto the bottom half. Pile some shredded iceburg lettuce, sliced tomatoes and sliced cucumber on top, season with a bit of black pepper, and replace the upper half of the baguette.

A tuna, tomato, lettuce and cucumber-filled baguette

Next time you’re stuck for some lunchtime ideas, why not make the GoldenEye baguette? Take it to work and pretend you’re in Q’s lab. Better still, leave it somewhere in the way, wait for someone to move it, then jump out with the immortal words, ‘Don’t touch that. That’s my lunch!’