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

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

Coincidentally, the celebration was a one-man show by my old mate George Layton, star, director, scriptwriter, author, whose finest hour - at least to my mind - was playing Des, the dodgy cars and truck mechanic in Minder.

George read from his collection of narratives set in the 1950s, when he was maturing in post-war Bradford. They're beautifully composed, warm, amusing, expressive, a slice of history, a working-class version of Richmal Crompton's Just William experiences.

The stories are based on the trials and tribulations of a boy being brought up by a single mom - an unconventional family life back then, regretfully only too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has remained in print given that 1975 and discovered its method on to the school curriculum, where it stays today.

I can't help questioning, however, how frequently these glorious texts are used in class nowadays, in between instructors stuffing their students' little heads with fashionable far-Left propaganda about 'white privilege', manifest destiny and, obviously, environment modification.

The kids in the monochrome school photograph which formed the backdrop to George's reading were definitely white, but no one might have described them as privileged. Those were the days when 'austerity' implied living from hand to mouth, not needing to opt for a standard 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and only having the ability to pay for an iPhone 14 instead of the latest all-singing, all-dancing AI version.

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

Until the digital/social media transformation, children gained their knowledge mostly from books, writes Littlejohn

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

Until the digital/social media transformation, children got their knowledge primarily from books. Yes, TV played a big function, as did the motion pictures, however nowhere near the dominance of TikTok and other apps using pleasure principle in byte-sized chunks.

And how can squinting at the newest CGI generated hit on a cellphone a few inches broad ever compare to the type of old-school, huge screen, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience commemorated at the Cinema Museum?

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

Among the most depressing things I have actually checked out just recently was the author Anthony Horowitz bemoaning the fact that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the shorter attention spans of today's children.

No surprise child, and undoubtedly adult, literacy levels have dropped alarmingly. All this has actually added to the stunning revelation that white, working class pupils - boys in specific - are being left. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been forced to admit they have actually been 'betrayed' by the modern schools system.

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

Education was the method out of hardship. It produced significant wordsmiths like George, in post-war Bradford - and our own dear Keith Waterhouse, late of this parish, who grew up in hardship in nearby pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the biggest present we can bestow on any kid. My grannies taught me to check out before I went to school, setting me on the early roadway to a satisfying career at the wordface instead of the relative drudgery of the work environment.

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

If the Education Secretary desires to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she might start by picking up the phone and inviting George to visit schools, reading from his short stories.

I honestly believe that if they could be encouraged to look up from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and influenced by the experiences of a young boy not that various to them, despite the range in decades.

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

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

Some are working as painters and designers, others as scaffolders nand shipment drivers. 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 has to take the biscuit.

It's also reported that some officers are working as supermarket checkout assistants. I don't expect there's any risk of them nicking a couple of thiefs.

Mind how you go.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who bought a baby from a stranger are selfish in the severe

First the frogs, now the octopuses
The illegal migrant armada crossing the Channel daily may end up being 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 service.

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

We're likewise told 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 nearest Holiday Inn in the past long.

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

Take Labour's 'ambition' to invest a pathetic 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 couple of years' time. And three per cent of stuff all is still stuff all.

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

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