escaping # in Emacs Shell

[Chris Volinsky]

I have a file which is delimited with '#' (I know, dont ask).  I
cannot figure out how to escape this in Emacs shell-mode, as in for an
awk script. 

The following do not work:

awk -F# '{print $1}' filename
awk -F\# '{print $1}' filename
awk -F"#" '{print $1}' filename
awk -F'#' '{print $1}' filename

its not an awk problem, I get the same thing with join -t\#, etc.

Thanks,
Chris