Saturday night at eight o'clock found me not at the movies however at the Cinema Museum, a surprise 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 tough times.

Truth be informed, I hardly ever venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, warned Arthur Daley: 'Lot of extremely wicked individuals' in Sarf Lunnon.

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

George was reading from his collection of short stories set in the 1950s, when he was maturing in post-war Bradford. They're magnificently written, warm, funny, evocative, a slice of history, a working-class variation of Richmal Crompton's Just William adventures.

The stories are based on the trials and adversities of a boy being brought up by a single mom - a non-traditional domesticity at that time, sadly just too common today. The Fib And Other Stories has been in print since 1975 and discovered its method on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can't help questioning, though, how frequently these wonderful texts are utilized in class these days, in between instructors stuffing their pupils' little heads with stylish far-Left propaganda about 'white benefit', manifest destiny and, naturally, environment change.

The kids in the monochrome school photograph which formed the background to George's reading were definitely white, but nobody could have described them as fortunate. Those were the days when 'austerity' suggested living from hand to mouth, not needing to opt for a basic 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and just having the ability to manage an iPhone 14 rather than the current all-singing, all-dancing AI version.

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

Until the digital/social media revolution, kids gained their understanding primarily from books, writes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, kids experienced genuine hardship, not the poverty of aspiration and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live via their smart phones, instead of wandering totally free and experiencing life to the complete.

Until the digital/social media transformation, kids acquired their understanding mostly from books. Yes, TV played a huge role, as did the motion pictures, however nowhere near the supremacy of TikTok and other apps using immediate gratification in byte-sized chunks.

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

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

Among the most depressing things I've checked out recently was the author Anthony Horowitz regreting the reality that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the much shorter attention periods these days's children.

No wonder child, and undoubtedly adult, literacy levels have actually plunged alarmingly. All this has actually added to the stunning discovery that white, working class students - kids in specific - are being left behind. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been forced to confess they have actually been 'betrayed' by the contemporary schools system.

They suffer from a lack of parental participation and following paucity of goal. The white, working class boy in George Layton's stories definitely didn't suffer any adult disregard from his aggressive mum. Nor did he lack imagination 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 matured in hardship in nearby pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the best gift 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 fulfilling profession at the wordface rather than the relative drudgery of the office.

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

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

I honestly think that if they could be convinced to look up from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and inspired by the adventures of a young kid not that different to them, regardless of the range in years.

You never understand, there may even be another Charlie Chaplin amongst them.

When they're not tasering one-legged 92-year-old guys or nicking individuals for publishing hurty words on the web, the police are significantly taking second jobs to supplement their income.

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand delivery chauffeurs. More intriguingly, 2nd tasks 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 shop needs to take the biscuit.

It's also reported that some officers are working as grocery store checkout assistants. I don't suppose there's any threat of them a couple of thiefs.

Mind how you go.

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

First the frogs, now the octopuses The illegal migrant armada crossing the Channel daily might 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 regional fishermen out of service.

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

We're likewise told that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an 'unstoppable invasive types' having escaped 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 before long.

And that's before I get to the buzzard that's been dive-bombing kids 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 invest a pitiful 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 won't be any GDP left in a few years' time. And 3 percent 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 said the same about those people who wish to leave the European yuman rites convention, Surkeir would have made him Attorney General.

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