Saturday night at 8 o'clock discovered me not at the films but at the Cinema Museum, a covert 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 hard times.

Truth be told, I hardly ever venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, cautioned Arthur Daley: 'Lot of really wicked people' in Sarf Lunnon.

Coincidentally, the celebration 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, funny, expressive, a piece of history, a working-class version of Richmal Crompton's Just William experiences.

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

I can't help questioning, however, how often these remarkable texts are utilized in class nowadays, in between teachers stuffing their students' little heads with fashionable far-Left propaganda about 'white opportunity', manifest destiny and, naturally, climate change.

The kids in the monochrome school photo which formed the background to George's reading were definitely white, however nobody might have explained them as privileged. Those were the days when 'austerity' meant living from hand to mouth, not needing to go for a fundamental 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and only being able to pay for an iPhone 14 instead of the latest all-singing, all-dancing AI version.

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

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

In the 1950s, children experienced genuine challenge, not the hardship of aspiration and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live via their mobile phones, rather of strolling free and experiencing life to the full.

Until the digital/social media revolution, children acquired their understanding mostly from books. Yes, TV played a huge function, as did the films, however nowhere near the supremacy of TikTok and other apps providing pleasure principle in byte-sized pieces.

And how can squinting at the current CGI generated blockbuster on a cellular phone a couple of inches large ever compare to the type of old-school, big screen, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience celebrated at the Cinema Museum?

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

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

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

They experience a lack of adult involvement and following scarceness of goal. The white, working class young boy in George Layton's stories certainly didn't suffer any adult disregard from his prideful mum. Nor did he lack creativity or aspiration.

Education was the way out of poverty. It produced eloquent wordsmiths like George, in - and our own dear Keith Waterhouse, late of this parish, who grew up in poverty in neighboring pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the greatest present 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 career at the wordface instead of the relative drudgery of the workplace.

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

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

I honestly think that if they could be encouraged to search for from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and inspired by the adventures of a young boy not that various to them, regardless of the distance in decades.

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

When they're not tasering one-legged 92-year-old men or nicking individuals for publishing hurty words on the web, the cops are progressively taking sidelines to supplement their earnings.

Some are working as painters and designers, others as scaffolders nand delivery motorists. More intriguingly, second tasks also consist of 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 store has 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 couple of shoplifters.

Mind how you go.

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

First the frogs, now the octopuses The unlawful migrant armada crossing the Channel daily might turn out to be the least of our issues. We now discover 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 service.

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 invasive types' having actually left 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.

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 have actually got enough trouble with home-grown Stuka-style pigeons without importing kamikaze buzzards.

Take Labour's 'ambition' to invest a useless 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 won't be any GDP left in a couple of years' time. And 3 per cent of things 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 of the United States.

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