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

Truth be told, I rarely endeavor south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, warned Arthur Daley: 'Lot of extremely wicked individuals' in Sarf Lunnon.

Coincidentally, the occasion was a one-man show by my old mate George Layton, actor, director, scriptwriter, author, whose finest hour - at least to my mind - was playing Des, the dodgy automobile mechanic in Minder.

George read from his collection of narratives set in the 1950s, when he was growing up in post-war Bradford. They're magnificently composed, warm, funny, expressive, a piece of history, a working-class variation of Richmal Crompton's Just William adventures.

The stories are based on the trials and tribulations of a boy being brought up by a single mother - a non-traditional domesticity back then, regretfully just too common today. The Fib And Other Stories has remained in print considering that 1975 and discovered its method on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can't assist wondering, though, how often these glorious texts are utilized in class these days, in between teachers packing their students' little heads with stylish far-Left propaganda about 'white opportunity', colonialism and, naturally, climate change.

The kids in the monochrome school picture which formed the background to George's reading were definitely white, but no one might have explained them as privileged. Those were the days when 'austerity' meant living from hand to mouth, not needing to go for a basic 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and just having the ability to afford an iPhone 14 instead of the most recent all-singing, all-dancing AI version.

Child hardship was real, bread-and-dripping, holes-in-your-shoes things, not dining on Deliveroo and hesitantly using last season's Nike trainers.

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

In the 1950s, kids experienced real challenge, not the poverty of aspiration and creativity which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live through their mobile phones, rather of roaming free and experiencing life to the complete.

Until the digital/social media transformation, children got their knowledge mainly from books. Yes, TV played a big role, as did the motion pictures, but nowhere near the domination of TikTok and other apps providing instant gratification in byte-sized portions.

And how can squinting at the newest CGI generated blockbuster on a cellular phone a few inches wide ever compare with the type of old-school, cinema, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience celebrated at the Cinema Museum?

It can't. Just as the very best images are said to be on the radio, even much better pictures can be found in the printed word.

Among the most dismal things I have actually read recently was the author Anthony Horowitz complaining the fact that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the much shorter attention periods of today's kids.

No wonder child, and indeed adult, literacy levels have plunged amazingly. All this has contributed to the stunning discovery that white, working class students - boys in particular - are being left. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been required to admit they have actually been 'betrayed' by the modern-day schools system.

They suffer from a lack of parental participation and ensuing paucity of aspiration. The white, working class boy in George Layton's stories certainly didn't suffer any adult disregard from his imperious mum. Nor did he do not have creativity or goal.

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 matured in poverty in neighboring pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the biggest gift we can bestow on any child. My grannies taught me to read before I went to school, setting me on the early road to a fulfilling profession at the wordface instead of the relative drudgery of the office.

George Layton is considering taking his one-man show on the roadway, to little provincial theatres. I have actually got a better concept.

If the Education Secretary wishes to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she could begin by getting the phone and inviting George to visit schools, checking out from his brief stories.

I truthfully think that if they could be persuaded to look up from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and motivated by the adventures of a young kid not that different to them, regardless of the distance in decades.

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

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

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand delivery chauffeurs. More intriguingly, sidelines likewise 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 store has to take the biscuit.

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

Mind how you go.

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

First the frogs, now the octopuses
The unlawful migrant armada crossing the Channel daily may end up being the least of our issues. We now learn 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 anglers out of service.

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

We're also told that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an 'unstoppable intrusive species' having actually gotten away into the wild and are colonising cities as far afield as Plymouth and Aberdeen. No doubt we'll be putting them up in the nearest Holiday Inn before long.

Which's before I get to the buzzard that's been dive-bombing kids in a school playground 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 'aspiration' to invest a pathetic three 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 stuff all is still stuff all.

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

Having just recently claimed that the initial ancient Britons were black, the woke revisionists now declare the Vikings were Muslims. Don't these individuals ever take a day off?