Smell is one of the most powerful triggers of memory and right now the aroma that has invaded my nostrils has transported me from a dining table in the West End back 30 years to the school dinner queue. Every couple of weeks I would reach the end of the queue and be instantly apprised of the nose-wrinkling, stomach-flipping truth about what was on the menu.

The smell was meaty but mean and unpalatable, as if bits of pig had been stuffed in a can for too long, dug out again and fried up in thin batter with cheap oil. Which is exactly what had happened. Spam fritters. They ruined my childhood lunches and now I feel sure that their modern equivalents are going to do the same again.

I have signed up to tackle a Spam feast. Seven courses of the world’s favourite luncheon meat. Spam cooked every which way. But still Spam.This may sound like the sort of nutty thing people do for charity, but we are at the final of the Spam Cook of the Year competition. After regional heats seven finalists are having their Spam recipes cooked by professional chefs. To be clear, it quickly becomes apparent that not all the contestants have entered the competition purely for the love of Spam. There is also the lure of a week in Hawaii attending the world Spam Jam finals.

Eva Noone cheerfully admits that before she spotted the competition she “had never tasted it before. But now we are converts.” She has created a “Spamdoori” dish. “The name came first and then the recipe.”

Chris Ashley, a medical student at the University of Manchester, claims that he is a regular consumer of Spam. “It’s dead easy to use. I don’t eat it every single night. That would be daft, perhaps every fortnight.”

Spam was conceived in 1937 in Minnesota when one Jay Hormel thought it would be a good idea to do something with pork shoulder off-cuts. A chap called Kenneth Daigneau, from New York, won a competition to name the product. It is generally assumed that the name comes from “spiced ham” but there have also been claims that it stands for shoulder of pork and ham. There have been many suggestions of other acronymic origins, from Something Posing As Meat to Spare Parts Animal Meat and worse. The company insists that while Spam “does include ham and spices, the term ‘spiced ham’ simply doesn’t paint the right picture of what a can of Spam Classic really is”.

A tin of Spam today contains pork, ham (technically the meat from the haunches of the pig), salt, water, potato starch, sugar and sodium nitrate to keep the pink colour.

Spam took off during the Second World War when, because of its long tin-life, it was shipped to troops all over the world. It continued to figure heavily during the postwar austerity years. Its ubiquity made it the subject of popular jokes. The most famous was the Monty Python sketch set in a café where everything comes with Spam: “You can’t have egg, bacon, sausage and Spam without the Spam.” Later, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Knights of the Round Table “eat ham and jam and Spam a lot”. This was the origin of the hit musical Spamalot.

Spam executives recently decided to embrace their Monty Python tormentors. There is even a Spamalot game on the company’s website. It is thought that the use of the word spam in an even less flattering way, to describe junk e-mails, originated with computer users influenced by the repetition of the word in the Python sketch.

For all the fun that has been had at its expense, the Hormel Foods Corporation is enjoying the biggest laugh. In 2007 Spam celebrated its 70th birthday and in the same year claimed to have sold its seven billionth can. In the US, where there is, of course, a Spam museum in Austin, Minnesota, 100 million tins are sold each year. In Britain sales approach 13 million tins annually.

The world centre of Spam consumption is the US territory of Guam, where residents eat an average of 16 cans per person each year. In Hawaii, the average consumption is six cans a year and it is even on the menu at McDonald’s. This is a legacy of the Second World War, when it was shipped out to the Pacific bases and also fed a civilian population deprived of fresh meat. So today, as the contestants prepare to see who has won a Hawaiian holiday, they sip tropical cocktails amid inflatable palm trees as the theme from Hawaii Five-0 plays in the background.

The first dish to be set before us is Sharon Lewandowski’s Wild Green Spam. This is a little nugget of Spam, like a tiny brick of fried tofu, served with rice and spinach leaves and is really quite acceptable.

In Chris Ashley’s Spam and Vegetable Cheese Flan, the little chunks of Spam look unnatural and processed but, as with the first dish, the Spam itself can hardly be detected.

That cannot be said for Phil Schofield’s Spamdora’s Box. Schofield is in the final for the second year running. The name is not a bad pun, but isn’t the point of Pandora’s Box that there’s a surprise inside? There is no disguising that Spam smell as the plate approaches. And once opened, this Chinese wonton parcel contains a big chunk of spam.

It’s that smell, and the little spongy Spam dice, that put me off an otherwise decent Spamish Welsh Omelette, conjured up by Nola Millward from Colwyn Bay.

I am sitting next to an advertising executive who has worked on Spam campaigns. He says that he cannot understand the paradox that people have no problem with tinned fish but they are snooty about eating meat out of a can. I am intrigued that he is being served slightly different dishes from me. Two years ago he became a vegetarian. He insists this has nothing to do with Spam. He claims that he knows the taste of Spam so well from his days as a meat eater that he can imagine what the Spam dishes taste like.

Eva Noone’s Spamdoori looks appetising because the Spam has been left in a tandoori marinade. But then on the inside there is no disguising the livid pink. With the mint sauce and spices, however, it is perfectly edible. Conforming to a cruel stereotype of Scottish cuisine, Louise Meenan from Glasgow has gone for deep-fried Spam. Her Spam Balls of Fire with Salsa contain a spicy mush that could be anything and tastes delicious.

The winner, according to a panel of foodies, is Nicky Baker’s Gruyère, Spam and Potato Gratin, a beautifully presented little tower of potato and cheese containing two delicate slices of cheese. Rebecca Wilson, European brand manager for Spam, and one of the judges, says that it was important that the winning dish did not hide its key ingredient. “I want to taste the Spam,” she says. “I don’t want to taste the Spam at all,” says fellow judge, Ben Dakin, food editor of Woman magazine. He quickly adds that he’s joking. “The test is, would you go back for seconds? There was nothing here today that I thought: what the hell is that?”

Nicky Baker, a florist from Tamworth, calls her dish the Spamworth entry. She declares herself “gobsmacked”. Her fiancé is delighted about the holiday, “but just a bit concerned we are going to be eating Spam every night for tea”. Some of the losers look genuinely crushed and, after all those cocktails, some are emotional. One tries to hug me .

After seven courses, I may never need to eat Spam again. But really the stuff was fussed about with here so I decide to hold another taste test. I buy some and cut it into tempting little rectangles that I arrange on kitchen towels. I shout “Treat!” and a dozen or so colleagues come running, salivating at the prospect of chocolate brownies or a slice of Victoria sponge with their coffee.

I’ll leave you with a transcript of their views:

“That’s not cake is it? Oh, the smell!”

“You think after not eating meat for 19 years this is the thing that would draw me back in?”

“It smells like the inside of a dog’s mouth.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“I grew up on Spam.”

(Shivering in a revolted way) “It’s what I would imagine raw spicy pig to taste like.”

“It doesn’t look like the food a human should eat.”

“I can’t decide if I like it or not. I think it’s horrible, but I think I might like it.

“Aw Jeez!”

“I’m not eating it. Isn’t that what work experience people are for?”

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