Saturday night at eight o'clock found me not at the films however at the Cinema Museum, a surprise 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 mom fell on hard times.

Truth be informed, I hardly ever venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, warned Arthur Daley: 'Lot of very 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 vehicle mechanic in Minder.

George was checking out from his collection of short stories embeded in the 1950s, when he was growing up in post-war Bradford. They're magnificently written, warm, funny, expressive, a slice of history, a working-class version of Richmal Crompton's Just William adventures.

The storylines are based on the trials and tribulations of a young boy being brought up by a single mom - a non-traditional domesticity back then, unfortunately only too common today. The Fib And Other Stories has been in print since 1975 and found its way on to the school curriculum, where it stays today.

I can't help questioning, however, how typically these glorious texts are utilized in class these days, in between instructors stuffing their students' little heads with stylish far-Left propaganda about 'white benefit', manifest destiny and, obviously, climate modification.

The kids in the monochrome school photograph which formed the background to George's reading were definitely white, however no one could have described them as privileged. Those were the days when 'austerity' suggested living from hand to mouth, not needing to settle for a basic 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and only having the ability to afford an iPhone 14 rather than the most current all-singing, all-dancing AI version.

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

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

In the 1950s, children experienced genuine difficulty, not the poverty of ambition and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live by means of their mobile phones, instead of roaming totally free and experiencing life to the complete.

Until the digital/social media revolution, kids got their knowledge mainly from books. Yes, TV played a big function, as did the films, but nowhere near the supremacy of TikTok and other apps using pleasure principle in byte-sized pieces.

And how can squinting at the current CGI created hit on a mobile phone a couple of inches large ever compare with the sort of old-school, huge screen, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience commemorated at the Cinema Museum?

It can't. Just as the finest photos are stated to be on the radio, even better images can be discovered in the printed word.

One of the most depressing things I've read 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 kids.

Not surprising that child, and indeed adult, literacy levels have actually plummeted alarmingly. All this has actually contributed to the shocking revelation that white, working class students - young boys in specific - are being left. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been required to admit they have actually been 'betrayed' by the modern schools system.

They experience a lack of parental participation and consequent paucity of aspiration. The white, working class kid in George Layton's stories certainly didn't suffer any adult disregard from his aggressive mum. Nor did he lack creativity or aspiration.

Education was the way out of poverty. 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 neighboring pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the best present we can bestow on any child. My grandmothers taught me to check out before I went to school, setting me on the early road to a fulfilling career at the wordface rather than 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 better concept.

If the Education Secretary wishes to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she could start by getting the phone and welcoming George to explore schools, checking out from his narratives.

I truthfully believe that if they might 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 distance in decades.

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

When they're not tasering one-legged 92-year-old guys or nicking individuals for posting hurty words on the internet, the authorities are progressively taking 2nd jobs to supplement their income.

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand delivery motorists. More intriguingly, second 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 store needs to take the biscuit.

It's also reported that some officers are working as grocery store checkout assistants. I do not suppose there's any threat of them nicking a couple of shoplifters.

Mind how you go.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who purchased an infant 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 problems. We now find out 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 anglers out of company.

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

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

Which's before I get to the buzzard that's been dive-bombing kids in a school play ground in Romford, Essex. Where the hell did that come from?

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

Take Labour's 'aspiration' to invest a worthless 3 percent 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 3 per cent of stuff all is still pack all.

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

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