I find browse-kill-ring very convenient.

It cleverly advices m-y so if its run before any preceding yank, it
shows the contents of the kill-ring and the user can select one entry to
be yanked.

Could something like this be included in Emacs-24? I feel it would be
useful to newcomers (and old-timers with bad short-term memory like me)

The defadvices would have to be removed.

I attach the lisp for inspection.