When the old lady next door died, her son took away the furniture in a sad, discreet van. Two days later, the house clearers came and slung everything else into a skip. After a respectful three hours, I climbed into the skip to have a look-see.

Is there anything more interesting than a skip of stuff hoarded for 60 years? Psychedelic wrapping paper from the 1960s, cellular blankets, an embroidered footrest, wooden-handled shears (the blades crimson with rust), 30-year-old tinsel (like etiolated disco dog tails), and, on the very top, a box of Which? magazines from the 1960s and 1970s.

All old magazines are interesting; even Speciality Bolts Weekly will have diverting adverts for Omo in it. But a stack of old issues of Which? – as underscored by its 60th anniversary this month – is an almost faultess chronicle of life in Britain since the Second World War. While back issues of old newspapers show you what big decisions the politicians made, Which? shows you what little decisions housewives made – the far less chronicled, and far more immediate, history of Britain.

And God, it comes across as a dirty, dreary and difficult place in which to run a household. To paraphrase Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s summation of Mars, 1969 ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. There are three whole issues of the magazine devoted to public poisoning – lead, mercury and asbestos. In 1968, 138,000 people were waiting to have a phone installed. Overnight travel to Ireland involved passengers sleeping outside, on the decks. “Convenience food” included dehydrated Vesta beef risotto, something that actually sounds worse than eating soil. A 1973 feature entitled “Bathing, illness and sewage” featured a map of Britain, pinpointing all the beaches with a sewage problem. In Bridlington, raw sewage was pumped straight on to the sand. In any bag of British potatoes, 21 per cent were cracked, rotted, green or wormy. Medicine consisted largely of salts for rheumatism. The advice for acne? “Wash your face a lot”. And 20p Lucky Charm tights persistently split at the crotch. And wine! My God, the wine. Even over a distance of nearly 40 years, one can sense the puckered horror of the Which? tasters on encountering Fine Fare Spanish Burgundy. “All felt something this sweet should not be called a Burgundy,” the reporter said, with heroic restraint.

Aside from making you profoundly grateful not be Sam Tyler in Life On Mars, however, old copies of Which? also peerlessly chronicle a giant shift in British attitudes. As a consumer magazine, it is on hand to cover the rise of the Consumer Age. It’s a bit like launching Small, Side-Lined Mammals Monthly the week after the dinosaurs got wiped out.

Here are the first, tentative, mentions of safety standards, refunds, statutory rights, and automatically “upgrading” to new technologies. Crazy foreign ideas are introduced, such as “sleeping quilts” (“While we tuck up in bed with blankets and sheets, people on the Continent have been using only a bag filled with duck plumage over them”). Technology starts its inexorable march into every corner of the house (“Colour television undoubtedly makes some programmes look very much better. Even The Black and White Minstrel Show”). And the predictions for the future, unlike those of Tomorrow’s World, are astonishingly accurate: “Soon all married women will have cars and drive to the shops”; “Members [considering newfangled credit cards] were worried about overspending – either unintentionally, or in a state of euphoria when they got the card.”

However, the main thing that it made me realise, as a current subscriber to Which?, is how unfocused and essentially useless Which? is now. Between the 1950s and the 1980s it was on fire – check out the ten-page feature by Clement Freud, trying all the archaic customs posts in England. It demanded improvements in this poor, bombed-out, Victorian country: houses to be properly earthed; poisonous household substances – such as bleach – to be labelled with a pictogram, to warn children, fabrics to be made flame-retardant, dolls to have no chokeable parts. Alongside the Consumers’ Association, Which? made this country, campaign by campaign, the place it is today: full of safe, cheap, cool stuff.

Perversely, however, it is this new climate that makes the current Which? feel impotent on two levels. First, its “Best Buys” prove almost impossible to actually buy. In the last year I’ve failed to buy a Best Buy TV, printer, Freeview box and dishwasher. Models become obsolete, or upgraded, so quickly that a printed guide to the “best” is often outdated before it comes out. Really, in the days of the no-quibble refund, you don’t need a whole magazine to tell you the “best” things to buy – you just buy one of the big brands from John Lewis. Secondly, the definition of “Best Buy” needs to be radically changed. Except for a roof, or a Saab, it’s usually cheaper to buy a replacement than get something mended.

Now, we all know that that is a fundamental economic illogic, one that is driving gigantic global environmental and humanitarian problems. Which? should be at the forefront of a campaign for there to be a guaranteed functioning lifetime for any electrical item. Manufacturers should be legally obliged to mend or upgrade the item within that time. The current system – whereby it’s cheaper to buy a new kettle shipped over from China than to get an old one repaired around the corner – is obscene. It’s an issue even more pressing than asbestos, raw sewage or the introduction of the duvet. And if Which? is to continue for another 60 years, that’s where its attentions must lie. That, and bringing back the amazing modernist cover art. The bright red “Cheese” issue from May 1969 is now on my kitchen wall.

Even as a con Kiefer’s a pro

Perhaps the eternal complaint of men and women is that women want the impossible from men. On the one hand, women want someone who is, in a nutshell, lovely – considerate, amusing and adept at entering a drunken gathering at 1am with a tray full of hot samosas and dips murmuring: “The chips should be ready in ten minutes.” Someone who will go to the allnight chemist’s for cystitis medicine, then pick up Grazia and a Twirl on the way back. On the other hand, you don’t want to be married to Little Jack Horner (“What a good boy am I!”). You want someone who’s a little bit whoargh. A little bit grrrrr. Someone fundamentally reliable – but with a certain measure of razziness.

Behold then, ladies, the perfect man: Kiefer Sutherland. Of course, anyone with functioning eyes knows that Sutherland is the perfect man: he is, after all, Jack Bauer. It would be impolite not to fancy someone who’s saved the world five times now – without ever going to the toilet.

Last year, on a whisky bender, Sutherland wrestled a 30ft Christmas tree to the ground in the foyer of a London hotel – but only after asking the manager’s permission, then paying for a new tree. This week his winning blend of whoargh and responsibility continues; having been “done” for doing an illegal U-turn “under the influence” (tsk), he is to be jailed. However, he has asked to do his time over Christmas and the new year, so as not to disrupt the shooting schedule for 24. This has prevented hundreds of coworkers from working over the Christmas holidays – while Sutherland sits lonely in chokey, eating LAPD turkey. He is a responsible bacchanalian. The perfect mentalman. Sigh.

Stung by an insult

I may close the correspondence on which insect bit me, with semi-fatal results, as I suspect that my injuries aren’t being taken seriously. Someone has suggested that I was savaged by a ladybird.

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