Saturday night at 8 o'clock discovered me not at the movies but at the Cinema Museum, a surprise 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 mother fell on difficult times.

Truth be informed, I hardly ever 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 program 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 read from his collection of narratives embeded in the 1950s, when he was maturing in post-war Bradford. They're magnificently written, warm, amusing, evocative, a slice of history, a working-class version of Richmal Crompton's Just William adventures.

The stories are based on the trials and tribulations of a young boy being raised by a single mother - a non-traditional domesticity back then, sadly just too common today. The Fib And Other Stories has remained in print since 1975 and found its way on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can't help wondering, though, how often these glorious texts are utilized in class these days, in between teachers stuffing their pupils' little heads with trendy far-Left propaganda about 'white benefit', manifest destiny and, obviously, climate modification.

The kids in the monochrome school photograph which formed the backdrop to George's reading were definitely white, but nobody could have described them as privileged. Those were the days when 'austerity' indicated living from hand to mouth, not needing to choose a basic 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and just being able to afford an iPhone 14 instead of the current all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.

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

Until the digital/social media revolution, kids acquired their knowledge mostly from books, composes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, children experienced genuine hardship, 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, instead of wandering free and experiencing life to the complete.

Until the digital/social media revolution, kids got their knowledge mainly from books. Yes, TV played a huge role, as did the motion pictures, but nowhere near the dominance of TikTok and other apps offering pleasure principle in byte-sized pieces.

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

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

One of the most depressing things I have actually read just recently was the author Anthony Horowitz regreting the reality that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the much shorter attention spans these days's kids.

No surprise kid, and undoubtedly adult, literacy levels have dropped alarmingly. All this has actually added to the shocking revelation that white, working class pupils - kids 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 modern schools system.

They experience an absence of parental participation and ensuing paucity of goal. The white, working class kid in George Layton's stories certainly didn't suffer any parental overlook from his imperious mum. Nor did he do not have creativity or goal.

Education was the method out of hardship. 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 neighboring pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the biggest present we can bestow on any kid. My grandmas 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 workplace.

George Layton is considering taking his one-man show on the road, to small provincial theatres. I have actually got a much better idea.

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

I truthfully believe that if they could be encouraged to look up from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and motivated by the adventures of a young kid not that various to them, regardless of 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 guys or nicking people for publishing hurty words on the internet, the authorities are progressively taking 2nd tasks to supplement their earnings.

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand delivery drivers. More intriguingly, 2nd jobs likewise consist of a DJ (PC Hammer, anyone?) and a reiki trainer, whatever that is.

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

It's likewise reported that some officers are working as supermarket checkout assistants. I do not suppose there's any threat of them nicking a few thiefs.

Mind how you go.

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

First the frogs, now the octopuses
The prohibited migrant armada crossing the Channel daily might end up being the least of our issues. We now find out that a fleet of foreign octopuses from the Med is devouring 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 assisting themselves to what's left.

We're also told that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an 'unstoppable intrusive 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 previously long.

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

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

Take Labour's 'ambition' to invest a worthless 3 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 couple of years' time. And three per cent of stuff 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 same about those people who desire 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 deconstructionists now allege the Vikings were Muslims. Don't these individuals ever take a day of rest?