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

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

Coincidentally, the occasion 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 cars and truck mechanic in Minder.

George read from his collection of brief stories embeded in the 1950s, when he was maturing in post-war Bradford. They're wonderfully written, warm, amusing, evocative, a piece 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 raised by a single mom - an unconventional domesticity at that time, regretfully just too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has remained in print given that 1975 and found its method on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can't assist wondering, however, how frequently these glorious texts are utilized in class these days, in between teachers packing their pupils' little heads with stylish far-Left propaganda about 'white benefit', colonialism and, of course, environment modification.

The kids in the monochrome school picture which formed the background to George's reading were certainly white, but no one could have described them as fortunate. Those were the days when 'austerity' suggested living from hand to mouth, not having to opt for a basic 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and only having the ability to afford an iPhone 14 instead of the current all-singing, all-dancing AI version.

Child poverty was genuine, 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 transformation, kids gained their understanding mainly from books, composes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, children experienced genuine challenge, not the poverty 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 strolling totally free and experiencing life to the complete.

Until the digital/social media revolution, kids gained their understanding mostly from books. Yes, TV played a big role, as did the films, but no place near the domination of TikTok and other apps providing instant gratification in byte-sized chunks.

And how can squinting at the current CGI produced smash hit on a mobile phone a few inches wide ever compare to the type of old-school, huge screen, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience celebrated at the Cinema Museum?

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

One of the most dismal things I've read recently was the author Anthony Horowitz complaining the fact that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the shorter attention spans these days's kids.

No surprise child, and certainly adult, literacy levels have plunged amazingly. All this has actually contributed to the shocking revelation that white, working class pupils - boys in specific - are being left behind. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been required to admit they have been 'betrayed' by the contemporary schools system.

They struggle with an absence of adult involvement and consequent paucity of aspiration. The white, working class kid in George Layton's stories certainly didn't suffer any adult disregard from his domineering mum. Nor did he lack imagination or aspiration.

Education was the escape 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 greatest present we can bestow on any kid. My grandmothers taught me to check out before I went to school, setting me on the early road to a satisfying career at the wordface instead of the relative drudgery of the work environment.

George Layton is considering 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 might start by getting the phone and inviting George to visit schools, reading from his narratives.

I honestly think that if they might be encouraged to search for from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and motivated by the adventures of a young kid not that different to them, in spite of the range in years.

You never understand, 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 web, the police are progressively taking sidelines to supplement their earnings.

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand delivery chauffeurs. More intriguingly, sidelines also consist of 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 threat of them nicking a couple of shoplifters.

Mind how you go.

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

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 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 local anglers out of organization.

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 intrusive species' having actually 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 soon.

Which'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've got enough difficulty with home-grown Stuka-style pigeons without importing kamikaze .

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 way Rachel From Complaints is taxing the economy to death, there will not be any GDP left in a couple of years' time. And 3 percent of stuff all is still pack all.

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

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 of rest?