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The inventor of the drunken Saturday night takeaway of choice – the doner kebab – has died aged 80.

Kadir Nurman, a Turkish immigrant, took the popular Middle Eastern dish of sliced grilled meat and served it in a flat bread creating a culinary, if unsophisticated, star.

Mr Nurman first set up a stall in the then West Berlin in 1972, selling grilled meat and salad in bread.

He later claimed to have noticed the fast pace of city life and thought busy Berliners might like a meal they could carry with them.

The combination of juicy meat, sliced from a rotating skewer, with all the trimmings, and optional chilli sauce has since become a firm fast-food favourite across the world.

There have been other claims to be the inventor of the doner but Mr Nurman’s contribution was recognised by the Association of Turkish Doner Manufacturers in 2011.

Mr Nurman, who emigrated to Germany in 1960, did not patent his invention, and so did not profit from the doner’s subsequent success - but in a 2011 interview he said he was happy so many Turkish people were able to make a living from doners.

Doner kebabs became so popular they even entered popular culture and one of comedian Harry Enfield’s most loved characters was Stavros the kebab shop owner.

There are now doner kebab pizzas and in Scotland the meat is sometimes coated in batter and deep fried.

Despite the popularity of the snack a study in the UK in 2009 revealed they contained “shocking” levels of fat, salt, and calories.

According to a survey by the Local Authority Coordinators of Regulatory Services (Lacors) which sampled the nutritional value of 494 kebabs some contained as much as 1,990 calories.

The study follows research by the UK’s Food Standards Agency in 2006 which found that 18.5 per cent of takeaway doner kebabs posed a “significant” threat to public health and 0.8 per cent posed an “imminent” threat.