Saturday night at eight o'clock found me not at the films but 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 informed, I seldom venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, cautioned Arthur Daley: 'Great deal of really wicked people' 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 vehicle mechanic in Minder.

George was checking out from his collection of brief stories set in the 1950s, when he was maturing in post-war Bradford. They're beautifully composed, warm, funny, evocative, a slice of history, a working-class version of Richmal Crompton's Just William adventures.

The storylines are based upon the trials and tribulations of a young boy being brought up by a single mother - an unconventional domesticity at that time, regretfully just too common today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually remained in print because 1975 and discovered its way on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can't help wondering, however, how often these glorious texts are used in class nowadays, in between instructors packing 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 backdrop to George's reading were definitely white, but nobody could have explained them as privileged. Those were the days when 'austerity' implied living from hand to mouth, not having to opt for a basic 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and only having the ability to pay for an iPhone 14 rather than the most current all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.

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

Until the digital/social media revolution, children acquired their understanding primarily from books, composes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, children experienced real challenge, not the hardship of aspiration and creativity which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live by means of their mobile phones, rather of wandering complimentary and experiencing life to the complete.

Until the digital/social media revolution, children gained their understanding primarily from books. Yes, TV played a big function, as did the motion pictures, but no place near the dominance of TikTok and other apps offering instant satisfaction in byte-sized pieces.

And how can squinting at the most recent CGI generated smash hit on a cellphone a few inches broad ever compare with 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 very best photos are stated to be on the radio, even better images can be discovered in the printed word.

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

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

They struggle with a lack of adult participation and ensuing paucity of aspiration. The white, working class boy in George Layton's stories definitely didn't suffer any adult overlook from his domineering mum. Nor did he lack imagination or goal.

Education was the way out of hardship. It produced significant 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 grannies taught me to read before I went to school, setting me on the early roadway to a fulfilling profession at the wordface instead of the relative drudgery of the office.

George Layton is considering taking his one-man show on the roadway, to small provincial theatres. I have actually 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 truthfully believe that if they could be encouraged to search for 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 years.

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

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

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand delivery drivers. More intriguingly, 2nd jobs 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 likewise 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 shoplifters.

Mind how you go.

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

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 learn that a fleet of foreign octopuses from the Med is devouring crab stocks off the coast of Devon and Cornwall and threatening to put regional fishermen out of service.

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

We're also told that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an 'unstoppable intrusive species' 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 nearest Holiday Inn eventually.

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 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 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 very same about those of us who wish to leave the European yuman rites convention, Surkeir would have made him Attorney General.

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