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

Truth be informed, I hardly ever venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, warned Arthur Daley: 'Lot of really wicked people' in Sarf Lunnon.

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

The stories are based upon the trials and tribulations of a kid being brought up by a single mom - an unconventional domesticity back then, regretfully only too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has been in print considering that 1975 and discovered its way on to the school curriculum, where it stays today.

I can't assist questioning, however, how frequently these marvelous texts are used in class nowadays, in between instructors stuffing their pupils' little heads with trendy far-Left propaganda about 'white advantage', manifest destiny and, naturally, climate modification.

The kids in the monochrome school picture which formed the backdrop to George's reading were definitely white, however nobody might have described them as privileged. Those were the days when 'austerity' meant living from hand to mouth, not having to settle for a basic 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and just having the ability to manage an iPhone 14 rather than the current all-singing, all-dancing AI version.

Child hardship was real, bread-and-dripping, holes-in-your-shoes things, not dining on Deliveroo and unwillingly using 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 difficulty, not the poverty of aspiration and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live through their mobile phones, instead of wandering complimentary and experiencing life to the full.

Until the digital/social media transformation, kids gained their knowledge primarily from books. Yes, TV played a big function, as did the movies, however nowhere near the supremacy of TikTok and other apps using pleasure principle in byte-sized portions.

And how can squinting at the current CGI generated smash hit on a cellular phone a couple of inches broad ever compare to the kind of old-school, cinema, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience commemorated at the Cinema Museum?

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

One of the most depressing things I have actually read recently was the author Anthony Horowitz complaining the reality that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the much shorter attention spans of today's children.

No wonder child, and undoubtedly adult, literacy levels have actually dropped alarmingly. All this has added to the stunning discovery that white, working class students - kids in particular - are being left behind. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been required to admit they have actually been 'betrayed' by the modern-day schools system.

They experience a lack of adult involvement and ensuing paucity of aspiration. The white, working class young boy in George Layton's stories certainly didn't suffer any adult overlook from his imperious mum. Nor did he lack creativity or aspiration.

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

Literacy is the best gift 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 fulfilling 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 roadway, to little provincial theatres. I have actually got a much better concept.

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

I truthfully think that if they could be convinced to look up from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and influenced by the experiences of a young boy not that different to them, in spite of the range in years.

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

When they're not tasering one-legged 92-year-old guys or nicking individuals for publishing hurty words on the internet, the cops are progressively taking sidelines to supplement their income.

Some are working as painters and designers, others as scaffolders nand shipment motorists. More intriguingly, sidelines also include a DJ (PC Hammer, anyone?) and a reiki instructor, 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 grocery store checkout assistants. I do not suppose there's any threat of them nicking a few shoplifters.

Mind how you go.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who purchased an infant from a stranger are self-centered in the severe

First the frogs, now the octopuses
The prohibited migrant armada crossing the daily might turn out to be the least of our issues. We now discover 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 company.

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 invasive types' 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 eventually.

And that'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 originated from?

We've got enough difficulty with home-grown Stuka-style pigeons without importing kamikaze buzzards.

Take Labour's 'aspiration' to spend a useless 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 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 cosmetic surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has actually been struck off. If he 'd said the 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 deconstructionists now declare the Vikings were Muslims. Don't these individuals ever take a day off?