Every week a new survey of some kind tells us how much time we waste sitting in traffic jams or watching television or waiting for automated call centres in Bombay to quote us happy.

Recently I was told that over a lifetime the average man wastes 394 days sitting on the lavatory. That’s 56 weeks, wailed the report despairingly, though I can’t imagine why. They’re the happiest and most peaceful 56 weeks of a chap’s life. I love being on the lavatory more than I love being on holiday, and I certainly don’t consider it time wasted.

And anyway, 56 weeks is nothing compared with the amount of time I really do waste, standing outside the front door in the freezing cold waiting for my wife to find the keys in her handbag.

And then there are the aeons I waste waiting for her to answer her mobile phone.

Normally it rings for 48 hours before she finds it nestling at the bottom of her bag, underneath a receipt for something she bought in 1972.

These days, if I suspect her phone might be in her bag I write a letter instead. It’s quicker.

The American army think they have a tough time trying to find Osama Bin Laden, who is holed out in a cave somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan. But really they should thank their lucky stars he didn’t choose to hide out in my wife’s handbag.

God, I’ve just thought of something. Maybe he did. Maybe he’s in there now, with his AK-47 and his video recorder. Maybe he’s using the mobile she lost two years ago to supply Al-Jazeera with news.

I read last week that women in Britain spend £350m a year on handbags and that there’s one particular brand that has a year-long waiting list even though it costs £7,000. You wouldn’t want to dance round one of those at a disco.

What’s more, it’s said that on average women have up to 40 handbags each. To find out why, I spoke to our children’s nanny, who reckons she has about 25. Apparently it has something to do with the seasons. She claims she couldn’t use her favourite bag in the summer because it’s made out of some cow and “would look all wrong”.

So what then? Should a summer bag be made out of cuckoos? Or dragon flies? Or Freddie Flintoff? The idea that a handbag has something to do with style was backed up by a spokesman for Jimmy Choo, who said that if you have good shoes and a good bag you will look right.

Rubbish. If you are fat and you have only one tooth there’s no handbag in the world that will mask the problem, unless you wear it over your head. And I don’t recommend that because if you put your head in a handbag it would take two years to find it again.

On average, we’re told, the contents of a woman’s bag are worth £550. That sounds about right. Fifty thousand things worth one pence each. My wife, however, claims that the contents of hers are worth “over £3,000”. Not including cash. Or, presumably, the Vat due back on all the receipts in there.

So what does she have, then, that could possibly be worth three grand? Well, there’s an iPod and the aforementioned phone. And a bag full of make-up that probably cost a hundred quid or so. But we’re still £2,000 light.

So, though I know it’s poor form, I’ve just been to the kitchen for a look and here’s how it breaks down. Down below the crust, in the asthenosphere, we find a pair of spectacles that she doesn’t need and three — that is not a misprint — three pairs of sunglasses. Which seems excessively optimistic, frankly.

Why, I asked later, do you have a pair of spectacles in your handbag when your eyes are fine? “Well, I might need them at some point,” she said. So does that mean there’s a Stannah stairlift in there as well, and some incontinence pads?

Below the eyewear, in the upper mantle, there is some chewing gum, which she never eats, coins for countries that don’t exist any more and pills for things that cleared up 15 years ago. I did not dare to go further than this, into the inner core, for fear of finding the bones of Shergar. Or a secret pocket being used by Al-Qaeda.

But there was something I noted. You know the ivory-billed woodpecker that ornithologists believe became extinct 50 years ago. Well let me tell you. It didn’t.

I genuinely don’t understand this need to carry everything you’ve ever owned around with you at all times. No, really, when you’re out and about you don’t need to have cough medicine for children who have already grown up and finished university. And if you don’t believe me, ask a man.

When I go out I take keys for the house, keys for the car, a telephone, a couple of credit cards, some money, two packs of cigarettes, a lighter and a packet of mints. And even when I’m wearing jeans and a T-shirt, which is always, I cope just fine.

Then there’s my wallet. I never leave this at home, principally because it contains the single most important thing a man can have about his person: endless pages torn from newspapers and magazines. Something to read, in other words, when I’m supposedly “wasting time” on the lavatory.

Times Recommends

• Fantasy world fuelled by sex, drink and drugs
• In short, the story is growing on us again
• A literary feast that I can’t wolf down