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

Truth be informed, I seldom endeavor south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, warned Arthur Daley: 'Great deal of very wicked individuals' in Sarf Lunnon.

Coincidentally, the occasion 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 car mechanic in Minder.

George was reading from his collection of narratives embeded in the 1950s, when he was maturing in post-war Bradford. They're wonderfully composed, warm, funny, evocative, a piece of history, a working-class version of Richmal Crompton's Just William experiences.

The stories are based on the trials and adversities of a kid being brought up by a single mom - a non-traditional household life back then, unfortunately just too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually remained in print because 1975 and found its method on to the school curriculum, where it stays today.

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

The kids in the monochrome school photo which formed the background to George's reading were definitely white, but no one could have explained them as privileged. Those were the days when 'austerity' implied living from hand to mouth, not needing to settle for a standard 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and only having the ability to pay for an iPhone 14 instead of the current all-singing, all-dancing AI version.

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

Until the digital/social media revolution, kids got their understanding mainly from books, composes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, children experienced genuine difficulty, not the hardship of aspiration and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live by means of their mobile phones, rather of roaming free and experiencing life to the complete.

Until the digital/social media transformation, kids got their understanding mainly from books. Yes, TV played a big function, as did the motion pictures, but nowhere near the dominance of TikTok and other apps using pleasure principle in byte-sized chunks.

And how can squinting at the most recent CGI created smash hit on a cellphone a couple of inches wide ever compare with the kind of old-school, cinema, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience celebrated at the Cinema Museum?

It can't. Just as the best pictures are stated to be on the radio, even better photos can be found in the printed word.

One of the most dismal things I have actually checked out recently was the author Anthony Horowitz bemoaning the fact that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the much shorter attention spans these days's children.

No surprise kid, and indeed adult, literacy levels have dropped alarmingly. All this has actually added to the shocking revelation that white, working class students - boys in specific - are being left. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been forced to admit they have been 'betrayed' by the modern-day schools system.

They suffer from an absence of adult involvement and ensuing scarceness of aspiration. The white, working class boy in George Layton's stories certainly didn't suffer any adult neglect from his imperious mum. Nor did he lack creativity or aspiration.

Education was the method out of poverty. It produced eloquent wordsmiths like George, in post-war Bradford - and our own dear Keith Waterhouse, late of this parish, who grew up in poverty in neighboring pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the greatest present we can bestow on any child. My grandmothers taught me to check out before I went to school, setting me on the early roadway to a satisfying profession 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 little provincial theatres. I've got a better idea.

If the Education Secretary wants to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she could start by getting the phone and inviting George to explore schools, reading from his brief stories.

I truthfully believe that if they could be persuaded to look up from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be and inspired by the experiences of a young boy not that different to them, regardless of the range in years.

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

When they're not tasering one-legged 92-year-old men or nicking individuals for publishing hurty words on the internet, the cops are progressively taking sidelines to supplement their income.

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand delivery drivers. More intriguingly, sidelines likewise include a DJ (PC Hammer, anybody?) and a reiki trainer, whatever that is.

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

It's also reported that some officers are working as supermarket checkout assistants. I don't expect there's any danger of them nicking a couple of thiefs.

Mind how you go.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who bought a child from a complete stranger are selfish in the severe

First the frogs, now the octopuses The illegal migrant armada crossing the Channel daily might end up being the least of our issues. We now discover 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 regional fishermen out of company.

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

We're likewise informed 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 closest Holiday Inn soon.

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

We have actually got enough problem with home-grown Stuka-style pigeons without importing kamikaze buzzards.

Take Labour's 'ambition' to spend a pitiful 3 per cent 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 three percent of things all is still pack all.

AN NHS cosmetic surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has actually been struck off. If he 'd stated the very same about those people who wish to leave the European yuman rites convention, Surkeir would have made him Chief law officer.

Having recently declared that the original ancient Britons were black, the woke revisionists now allege the Vikings were Muslims. Don't these people ever take a day off?