Saturday night at eight o'clock discovered me not at the movies but at the Cinema Museum, a concealed 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 mother fell on difficult times.

Truth be told, I seldom venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, warned Arthur Daley: 'Lot of extremely 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 automobile mechanic in Minder.

George was reading from his collection of narratives set in the 1950s, when he was growing up in post-war Bradford. They're perfectly composed, warm, funny, expressive, a piece of history, a working-class variation of Richmal Crompton's Just William adventures.

The stories are based on the trials and adversities of a young boy being brought up by a single mother - a non-traditional domesticity at that time, regretfully just too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually been in print given that 1975 and discovered its method on to the school curriculum, where it stays today.

I can't assist wondering, however, how often these remarkable texts are used in class nowadays, in between teachers stuffing their students' little heads with stylish far-Left propaganda about 'white advantage', colonialism and, obviously, climate modification.

The kids in the monochrome school photograph which formed the background to George's reading were certainly white, however nobody could have explained them as fortunate. Those were the days when 'austerity' meant living from hand to mouth, not having to settle for a standard 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and only being able to manage an iPhone 14 rather than the most recent all-singing, all-dancing AI version.

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

Until the digital/social media transformation, kids got their understanding mostly from books, writes Littlejohn

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

Until the digital/social media transformation, children got their knowledge mainly from books. Yes, TV played a big function, as did the movies, however nowhere near the supremacy of TikTok and other apps offering pleasure principle in byte-sized pieces.

And how can squinting at the most recent CGI created smash hit on a cellphone a couple of inches large ever compare with 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 very best photos are stated to be on the radio, even better photos can be found in the printed word.

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

Not surprising that child, and undoubtedly adult, literacy levels have plummeted amazingly. All this has added to the shocking discovery that white, working class pupils - boys in particular - are being left behind. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been forced to confess they have been 'betrayed' by the modern schools system.

They experience a lack of adult involvement and ensuing scarceness of goal. The white, working class young boy in George Layton's stories certainly didn't suffer any adult disregard from his aggressive 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 grew up in poverty in nearby 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 profession at the wordface instead of the relative drudgery of the office.

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 wishes to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she could start by selecting up the phone and inviting George to explore schools, reading from his narratives.

I honestly believe that if they could be persuaded to search for from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and motivated by the experiences of a young boy not that various to them, despite the distance in decades.

You never ever know, there might even be another Charlie Chaplin among them.

When they're not tasering one-legged 92-year-old guys or nicking people for posting hurty words on the internet, the authorities are significantly taking sidelines to supplement their income.

Some are working as painters and designers, others as scaffolders nand shipment drivers. More intriguingly, 2nd tasks also include a DJ (PC Hammer, anybody?) and a reiki instructor, whatever that is.

My favourites are beekeeper and kickboxing coach, although the copper running a tea shop needs to take the biscuit.

It's also 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 thiefs.

Mind how you go.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who purchased a baby from a 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 feasting on crab stocks off the coast of Devon and Cornwall and threatening to put local anglers out of company.

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

We're likewise informed that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an 'unstoppable intrusive species' having actually 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 soon.

And that's before I get to the buzzard that's been dive-bombing children in a school play area 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 pathetic 3 per cent 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 per cent of stuff all is still stuff all.

AN NHS surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has been struck off. If he 'd stated the very same about those people who wish to leave the European yuman rites convention, Surkeir would have made him Chief law officer.

Having just 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?