Saturday night at eight o'clock discovered me not at the movies but at the Cinema Museum, a covert gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, situated in a previous workhouse which was briefly home to the young Charlie Chaplin after his mom fell on tough times.

Truth be informed, I hardly ever venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, cautioned Arthur Daley: 'Lot of really 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 - at least to my mind - was playing Des, the dodgy automobile mechanic in Minder.

George read from his collection of short stories embeded in the 1950s, when he was growing up in post-war Bradford. They're wonderfully written, warm, funny, evocative, a piece of history, a working-class variation of Richmal Crompton's Just William adventures.

The storylines are based on the trials and tribulations of a kid being raised by a single mom - a non-traditional domesticity at that time, unfortunately just too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually remained in print since 1975 and discovered its way on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can't assist wondering, though, how often these marvelous texts are used in class these days, in between teachers stuffing their pupils' little heads with fashionable far-Left propaganda about 'white privilege', colonialism and, of course, climate modification.

The kids in the monochrome school photo which formed the backdrop to George's reading were definitely white, however no one could have explained them as fortunate. Those were the days when 'austerity' meant living from hand to mouth, not having to choose a fundamental 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and just being able to pay for an iPhone 14 rather than the most current all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.

Child hardship was genuine, bread-and-dripping, holes-in-your-shoes things, 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, real difficulty, not the hardship of ambition and creativity which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live by means of their cellphones, rather of wandering complimentary and experiencing life to the complete.

Until the digital/social media revolution, children got their understanding mainly from books. Yes, TV played a big function, as did the movies, however nowhere near the domination of TikTok and other apps using pleasure principle in byte-sized chunks.

And how can squinting at the current CGI produced smash hit on a mobile phone a couple of inches broad ever compare to 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 finest pictures are said to be on the radio, even better photos can be discovered in the printed word.

Among the most dismaying things I've checked out just recently was the author Anthony Horowitz complaining the reality that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the much shorter attention periods of today's children.

No marvel child, and undoubtedly adult, literacy levels have actually plunged alarmingly. All this has contributed to the shocking discovery that white, working class pupils - kids in specific - are being left. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been required to admit they have actually been 'betrayed' by the modern schools system.

They suffer from a lack of adult participation and consequent scarceness of goal. The white, working class kid in George Layton's stories certainly didn't suffer any parental neglect from his prideful mum. Nor did he do not have imagination or goal.

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

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

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

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

I truthfully think that if they might be convinced to search for from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and motivated by the adventures of a young boy not that different to them, despite the range in decades.

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 posting hurty words on the internet, the authorities are progressively taking sidelines to supplement their earnings.

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand delivery drivers. More intriguingly, sidelines also 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 grocery store checkout assistants. I do not suppose there's any danger of them nicking a couple of thiefs.

Mind how you go.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who purchased an infant from a stranger are selfish in the extreme

First the frogs, now the octopuses The prohibited migrant armada crossing the Channel daily might turn out to be the least of our problems. 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 fishermen out of business.

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

We're also informed that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an 'unstoppable intrusive species' having 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 nearby Holiday Inn soon.

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

Take Labour's 'aspiration' to spend a pitiful 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 things all is still stuff 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 Attorney general of the United States.

Having recently declared that the initial ancient Britons were black, the woke deconstructionists now allege the Vikings were Muslims. Don't these people ever take a day of rest?