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

Truth be told, I rarely venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, alerted Arthur Daley: 'Great deal of really 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 - at least to my mind - was playing Des, the dodgy car mechanic in Minder.

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

The stories are based upon the trials and adversities of a boy being brought up by a single mother - 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 method on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can't help questioning, though, how typically these remarkable texts are used in class nowadays, in between instructors packing their pupils' little heads with stylish far-Left propaganda about 'white advantage', colonialism and, of course, climate change.

The kids in the monochrome school photo which formed the backdrop to George's reading were certainly white, however nobody could have explained them as privileged. Those were the days when 'austerity' suggested living from hand to mouth, not needing to go for a fundamental 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and just having the ability to manage an iPhone 14 instead of the most recent all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.

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

Until the digital/social media revolution, children got their knowledge mostly from books, writes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, children experienced real hardship, not the poverty of ambition and creativity which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live by means of their cellphones, rather of strolling complimentary and experiencing life to the complete.

Until the digital/social media transformation, kids got their understanding primarily from books. Yes, TV played a huge role, as did the motion pictures, however no place near the domination of TikTok and other apps offering instantaneous gratification in byte-sized pieces.

And how can squinting at the latest CGI produced smash hit on a cellphone a few inches broad ever compare with the kind of old-school, big screen, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience commemorated at the Cinema Museum?

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

Among the most depressing things I've checked out just recently was the author Anthony Horowitz bemoaning the truth that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the shorter attention periods of today's kids.

No marvel kid, and indeed adult, literacy levels have plunged amazingly. All this has added to the shocking discovery that white, working class pupils - young boys in specific - are being left behind. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been required to admit they have actually been 'betrayed' by the modern schools system.

They experience an absence of parental involvement and ensuing paucity of goal. The white, working class boy in George Layton's stories certainly didn't suffer any parental overlook from his domineering 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 poverty in nearby pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the biggest 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 workplace.

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

If the Education Secretary wants to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she might begin by selecting up the phone and welcoming George to visit schools, checking out from his short stories.

I truthfully believe that if they might be convinced to search for from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and influenced by the adventures of a young kid not that various to them, in spite of the distance in years.

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

When they're not tasering one-legged 92-year-old guys or nicking people for posting hurty words on the web, the authorities are progressively taking 2nd tasks to supplement their earnings.

Some are working as painters and designers, others as scaffolders nand shipment chauffeurs. More intriguingly, second jobs likewise include 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 needs to take the biscuit.

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

Mind how you go.

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

First the frogs, now the octopuses The prohibited migrant armada crossing the Channel daily may 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 local fishermen out of organization.

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

We're likewise informed that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an 'unstoppable invasive 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 closest Holiday Inn previously long.

And that'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 buzzards.

Take Labour's 'ambition' to spend 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 won't be any GDP left in a few years' time. And three 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 said the very same about those people who wish to leave the European yuman rites convention, Surkeir would have made him Attorney General.

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