h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have always believed the story told to me in my navy days, that the egg banjo gets it's name from the fried egg and bread combo served to drunken sailors just outside of the Samabawang naval base in Singapore. They are (or at least were in the 70's) wrapped in paper secured with an elastic band, for transport back to the ship. Oh! how the Singaporean taxi drivers delighted, and were never bored with(!!), our monotone accompaniment to the hits of the day and worse as we plucked upon our chosen instrument....

Perhaps you can clarify something - I have heard some refer to a cold egg banjo as "cowboy" - which I always thought was cold beans, with or without cold bacon. Which do you reckon it should be?
BTW - Wouldn't a cheesey/hammy/eggy butty bring a new dimension - virtually an egg string orchestra (strings of melted cheese, of course?)

Only thing is, the soldiers in the Royal Tank Regiment were enjoying (in a documeted fashion) egg banjos during the second world war. So seventies Singapore was not the reason for them being called Banjos.

I'll probably get shot for doing this in works' time, but I've just been told I'm being laid off at the end of the week with nothing to move on to (temp job) so what the hell...

there are references to the "egg banjo" as a staple of the British soldier in India going back to the early 1940's and possibly much earlier.

George McDonald Frazer (author of Flashman) served in 1944-46 in the Indian Army, and writes of the battalion's "char-wallahs" - Indian civilians who followed his Battalion, in this case the Border Regiment, and who made a living trading in all the little comforts that made a soldier's life worthwhile - waiting for them to come out of the front line against the Japanese, and being ready with tea, haircuts, beard-shaves, and the inevitable egg banjos to eat. acounts of SAS life in the Far East in the 1950's and 1960's show the char-wallah lived on, in informal SAS service, and so did the egg banjo. (in Malaya, Borneo and even Aden)