THERE is only one thing women of a certain age want for a Christmas present this year. It's called the Best of Jackie compilation album (Calton Books GBP16.99), and, if opened early tomorrow morning, it will cause the turkey to be late in the oven, the sprouts to be overcooked and the gravy . . . oh, who gives a damn about the gravy anyway.

Not us, not when we've got the best nostalgia trip in the world to indulge in.

Once upon a a time in a more innocent world, long before girls' teenage magazines became how-to manuals on oral sex and morningafter pills, Jackie was the bible for every 12- to16-year-old. At the peak of its popularity, in the late 1960s and 1970s, it was selling one million copies a week.

Think about it. One million copies. I suppose you could describe it as the country's largest club. We were a vast army of unworldly, hormone-tossed girls, shackled by midi skirts, weighed down by hair that could be neither lightened nor lifted (those being the days when only hookers used hair dye and mousse was yet to be invented), and raised up by platform soles.

We wanted to look pretty, learn how to kiss and meet David Cassidy (well, some did; I was more of a Marc Bolan girl myself). Most of all, we wanted to belong.

DC Thomson in Dundee, the publisher, has never had a cuttingedge image, but with Jackie it hit a niche market in a manner little short of inspirational.

Here was a lively mix of romance, pop, fashion and beauty tips, plus Cathy and Claire on the problem pages, telling you how to cope if you blushed when boys spoke to you, or how to strike up conversation with someone you fancied on the school bus.

Miraculously, parents were not offended, for Jackie managed to be both daring and sensible. It was a thing of its time.

It succeeded, I guess, because it dealt with universal insecurities and universal yearnings. Launched in 1964 at the time of the Beatles, it ran until 1993 when Take That were topping the charts. Then it died, killed by competition and a more sexualised world.

All sorts of strange habits can be blamed on Jackie. In an attempt to get blonde streaks, we would put freshly squeezed lemon juice in our hair and sit in the sun for hours, eyes stinging, our heads sticky and caked, like extras from a horror film.

We practised kissing on our forearms. We tried out love bites ditto, though we knew we'd never dare give a boy one. We made tapestry head-bands from old curtains and inserted triangles into the legs of our jeans to make the flares bigger.

Jackie had in-built thriftiness. You didn't buy fashion, you made it: sewing big gold buttons down the front of the midi skirt, dying things plum colour, stitching contrasting patches everywhere.

What did it do for us? I remember memorising Ten Best Flirting Techniques when I should have been learning the causes of the French Revolution; neither subject, come to think of it, did anything for me in later life. Nor did the lemon juice work.

Nina Myskow, who edited Jackie in the mid-1970s, has commented that the secret of its success was that it recognised the gap between childhood and adulthood. "Today's kids may go straight from Barbie dolls to bondage in terms of their reading material but, back then, there was a breathing space."

I'd go back to the 1970s in a minute. On the condition hair mousse had been invented.

This Christmas's most useless present: a satellite navigation system. I have never yet met a man who admits to being lost in the first place.

So sad when gays play it straight

I'm appalled by the arrival of gay marriages. All that confetti and tie and tails, cheesy pictures of the smiling couple, his and his bath towels. Is this really what the gay movement has fought for? Is this the pinnacle of gay rights: the chance to do the same gruesome things as heterosexual people do? How sad that a minority group, one which has battled oppression for years, should equate liberation with . . . well, with a John Lewis wedding list. That's the trouble with going mainstream, you see: you lose the allure and originality of the outcast. Worst of all, you become conventional. All gay people with taste must be running screaming for the hills.

It's such a novel way to shop, I'd swear by it

We're having a German Christmas, courtesy of Lidl. It's a bit like being on a cheap skiing holiday without the snow.

While people were queuing to get into Tesco and Marks & Spencer carparks, blaring their horns and indulging in indescribably horrible middle-class parking rage, I have done a huge shop in an empty supermarket and it cost me a third of what I would have spent elsewhere.

Besides, the things you consume at Christmas are the things Lidl are best at: German chocolate, luxury continental biscuits, premium ham, European cheeses, cheap German beer and a remarkable cereal called Golden Balls Nougat Pillows, which beats Weetabix hands down for entertainment. For novelty value alone, quite apart from the savings, Lidl is worth it.

There are drawbacks. The check-out boy says "F***" when he accidentally slings your tomatoes on the f loor. Plus Lidl is customer-hostile in the way of easyJet, refusing to let you bag your stuff at the checkout because it wastes time, making you pay for plastic bags and offering no baskets.

Lidl is an interesting phenomenon. "Deep discount" supermarkets are on the rise in Europe, and one of the fastest expanding retail companies is Lidl, privately owned by German entrepreneur Dieter Schwarz.

In Britain, Lidl offers shop assistants an hourly rate of GBP7.80 and membership of a pension scheme. Better than that, it offers work in areas where work is not readily available. The check-out boy who dropped my tomatoes was eager, helpful, fast and I forgive him the "F***". I bet he's glad of the job. Shopping snobs should realise what they're missing.