Saturday night at 8 o'clock found me not at the motion pictures but at the Cinema Museum, a concealed gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, situated in a previous workhouse which was quickly home to the young Charlie Chaplin after his mother fell on difficult times.

Truth be told, I rarely venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, cautioned Arthur Daley: 'Great deal of extremely wicked people' in Sarf Lunnon.

Coincidentally, the event was a one-man show by my old mate George Layton, star, director, scriptwriter, author, whose finest hour - a minimum of to my mind - was playing Des, the dodgy automobile mechanic in Minder.

George was checking out from his collection of short stories embeded in the 1950s, when he was maturing in post-war Bradford. They're perfectly written, warm, amusing, expressive, a piece of history, a working-class variation of Richmal Crompton's Just William experiences.

The stories are based on the trials and adversities of a young boy being raised by a single mom - an unconventional domesticity back then, regretfully only too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has remained in print considering that 1975 and found its method on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can't assist questioning, however, how typically these marvelous texts are used in class these days, in between instructors stuffing their pupils' little heads with trendy far-Left propaganda about 'white benefit', colonialism and, of course, climate modification.

The kids in the monochrome school picture which formed the backdrop to George's reading were certainly white, however nobody might have described them as fortunate. Those were the days when 'austerity' indicated living from hand to mouth, not needing to choose a fundamental 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and only having the ability to pay for an iPhone 14 rather than the current all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.

Child hardship was genuine, bread-and-dripping, holes-in-your-shoes stuff, not dining on Deliveroo and reluctantly wearing last season's Nike fitness instructors.

Until the digital/social media transformation, kids gained their understanding mostly from books, writes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, children experienced real difficulty, not the hardship of ambition and creativity which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live through their smart phones, instead of strolling complimentary and experiencing life to the complete.

Until the digital/social media transformation, kids gained their knowledge primarily from books. Yes, TV played a big role, as did the motion pictures, however no place near the dominance of TikTok and other apps offering pleasure principle in byte-sized chunks.

And how can squinting at the current CGI generated smash hit on a cellphone a few inches large ever compare with the kind of old-school, cinema, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience commemorated at the Cinema Museum?

It can't. Just as the finest images are said to be on the radio, even better images can be discovered in the printed word.

One of the most depressing things I've read just recently was the author Anthony Horowitz regreting the truth that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the shorter attention spans of today's kids.

No surprise child, and indeed adult, literacy levels have actually plunged alarmingly. All this has actually added to the stunning revelation that white, working class students - young boys in particular - are being left. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been forced to admit they have actually been 'betrayed' by the contemporary schools system.

They suffer from an absence of and following paucity of aspiration. The white, working class boy in George Layton's stories definitely didn't suffer any adult neglect from his imperious mum. Nor did he lack imagination or goal.

Education was the method out of poverty. It produced significant wordsmiths like George, in post-war Bradford - and our own dear Keith Waterhouse, late of this parish, who matured in hardship in close-by pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the best present we can bestow on any child. My grandmas taught me to read before I went to school, setting me on the early road to a fulfilling career at the wordface rather than the relative drudgery of the work environment.

George Layton is thinking about taking his one-man program on the road, to small provincial theatres. I've got a better concept.

If the Education Secretary wants to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she could begin by getting the phone and welcoming George to explore schools, reading from his narratives.

I truthfully believe that if they might be persuaded to search for from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and influenced by the adventures of a young boy not that different to them, despite the distance in decades.

You never know, there might even be another Charlie Chaplin among them.

When they're not tasering one-legged 92-year-old males or nicking individuals for posting hurty words on the web, the cops are increasingly taking 2nd tasks to supplement their income.

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand shipment chauffeurs. More intriguingly, second jobs also include a DJ (PC Hammer, anybody?) and a reiki instructor, whatever that is.

My favourites are beekeeper and kickboxing coach, although the copper running a tea shop has to take the biscuit.

It's likewise reported that some officers are working as grocery store checkout assistants. I don't suppose there's any danger of them nicking a few thiefs.

Mind how you go.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who purchased a baby from a stranger are self-centered in the severe

First the frogs, now the octopuses The unlawful migrant armada crossing the Channel daily may turn out to be the least of our issues. We now find out that a fleet of foreign octopuses from the Med is feasting on crab stocks off the coast of Devon and Cornwall and threatening to put local fishermen out of business.

It's bad enough French trawlers hoovering up our fish without migrant molluscs helping themselves to what's left.

We're also told that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an 'unstoppable invasive species' having actually left into the wild and are colonising cities as far afield as Plymouth and Aberdeen. No doubt we'll be putting them up in the nearby Holiday Inn eventually.

Which's before I get to the buzzard that's been dive-bombing children in a school playground in Romford, Essex. Where the hell did that originated from?

We've got enough trouble with home-grown Stuka-style pigeons without importing kamikaze buzzards.

Take Labour's 'ambition' to spend a pathetic three percent of GDP on defence by the year 2525 with a shovel-load of Maldon's finest. The method Rachel From Complaints is taxing the economy to death, there will not be any GDP left in a few years' time. And 3 per cent of things all is still stuff all.

AN NHS surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has actually been struck off. If he 'd stated the exact same about those of us who wish to leave the European yuman rites convention, Surkeir would have made him Attorney General.

Having recently claimed that the original ancient Britons were black, the woke deconstructionists now declare the Vikings were Muslims. Don't these people ever take a day of rest?