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Saturday night at 8 o'clock discovered me not at the movies however at the Cinema Museum, a surprise gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, located in a previous workhouse which was quickly home to the young Charlie Chaplin after his mom fell on difficult times.

Truth be informed, I hardly ever endeavor south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, alerted 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 - a minimum of to my mind - was playing Des, the dodgy cars and truck mechanic in Minder.

George was checking out from his collection of brief stories set in the 1950s, when he was growing up in post-war Bradford. They're magnificently composed, 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 adversities of a boy being raised by a single mother - a non-traditional family life back then, sadly only too typical today. The Fib And Other has been in print considering that 1975 and found its method on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can't help questioning, however, how often these marvelous texts are used in class these days, in between instructors packing their students' little heads with stylish far-Left propaganda about 'white benefit', colonialism and, naturally, environment modification.

The kids in the monochrome school picture 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' suggested living from hand to mouth, not needing to opt for a basic 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and only being able to pay for an iPhone 14 rather than the most recent all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.

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

Until the digital/social media transformation, kids acquired their knowledge mainly from books, writes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, children experienced authentic hardship, not the poverty of aspiration and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live via their cellphones, instead of wandering complimentary and experiencing life to the complete.

Until the digital/social media revolution, children got their understanding mostly from books. Yes, TV played a big role, as did the films, but no place near the dominance of TikTok and other apps providing pleasure principle in byte-sized portions.

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

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

One of the most dismal things I've checked out just recently was the author Anthony Horowitz complaining the fact 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 amazingly. All this has actually added to the shocking discovery that white, working class pupils - kids in particular - are being left. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been forced to admit they have actually been 'betrayed' by the contemporary schools system.

They experience an absence of adult participation and ensuing scarceness of aspiration. The white, working class young boy in George Layton's stories definitely didn't suffer any parental neglect from his aggressive mum. Nor did he do not have creativity or goal.

Education was the way 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 poverty in nearby pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the best present we can bestow on any child. My grannies taught me to read before I went to school, setting me on the early road to a fulfilling 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 better idea.

If the Education Secretary wants to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she could start by getting the phone and inviting George to tour schools, reading from his narratives.

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

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

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

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand shipment motorists. More intriguingly, sidelines likewise 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 needs to take the biscuit.

It's likewise reported that some officers are working as grocery store checkout assistants. I don't expect there's any threat of them nicking a couple of shoplifters.

Mind how you go.

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

First the frogs, now the octopuses
The illegal migrant armada crossing the Channel daily might 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 regional 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 told that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an 'unstoppable intrusive types' 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 nearest Holiday Inn soon.

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 originated from?

We've got enough problem 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 will not be any GDP left in a few years' time. And 3 percent of things all is still stuff all.

AN NHS cosmetic surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has been struck off. If he 'd stated the exact 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 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?