The late broadcaster and campaigner Esther Rantzen leaves behind a formidable legacy, from establishing Childline to fighting for better end-of-life care. But to many, Rantzen will always be associated with That’s Life!, the long-running magazine programme she hosted for 21 years and which remains the gold standard of the much-missed consumer-rights genre.

We haven’t run out of scams, rip-offs or miserable customer-service experiences

We haven’t run out of scams, rip-offs or miserable customer-service experiences

Regularly attracting audiences of up to 20 million, That’s Life! was a veritable smorgasbord of this, that and the other. Any given episode might feature phallic vegetables, saucy old ladies, performing pets and humorous typos, capped off with a heartrending piece about alpaca trafficking. Younger readers would do well to think of the programme as an analogue version of The One Show, or 45 minutes’ worth of Instagram reels all spliced together.

Some of the show’s most memorable moments – outside of Nicholas Winton surrounded by those he saved from the Holocaust, or a talking dog saying ‘sausages’ (how’s that for range?) – came from its surprisingly hard-hitting consumer-rights reports. Here That’s Life! tackled everything from faulty goods and dodgy traders to shoddy service and botched repairs.

Unkind eyes might view this commitment to championing consumer rights, whether through investigative reporting or long-running features like Heap of the Week (in which failing domestic........

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