Saturday night at eight o'clock discovered me not at the films but at the Cinema Museum, a covert 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 informed, I hardly ever endeavor 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 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 narratives set in the 1950s, when he was growing up in post-war Bradford. They're magnificently composed, warm, amusing, evocative, a slice of history, a working-class variation of Richmal Crompton's Just William adventures.

The storylines are based upon the trials and tribulations of a boy being raised by a single mom - a non-traditional domesticity back then, regretfully only too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has been in print given that 1975 and discovered its method on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can't assist questioning, though, how frequently these marvelous texts are utilized in class these days, in between instructors packing their students' little heads with stylish far-Left propaganda about 'white privilege', colonialism and, obviously, climate change.

The kids in the monochrome school photograph which formed the backdrop to George's reading were certainly white, however no one might have explained them as fortunate. Those were the days when 'austerity' suggested living from hand to mouth, not needing to settle for a fundamental 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and just being able to manage an iPhone 14 instead of the current all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.

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

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

In the 1950s, kids experienced real challenge, not the hardship of ambition and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live by means of their smart phones, rather of wandering complimentary and experiencing life to the full.

Until the digital/social media transformation, kids acquired their understanding mostly from books. Yes, TV played a huge function, as did the movies, but no place near the supremacy of TikTok and other apps providing instant satisfaction in byte-sized portions.

And how can squinting at the current CGI generated hit on a mobile phone a few inches large ever compare to the kind 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 images are said to be on the radio, even much better pictures can be discovered in the printed word.

One of the most dismal things I've checked out just recently was the author Anthony Horowitz bemoaning the fact that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the much shorter attention spans these days's kids.

No marvel child, and undoubtedly adult, literacy levels have actually plunged amazingly. All this has contributed to the stunning revelation that white, working class students - young boys in specific - are being left. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been required to confess they have been 'betrayed' by the modern schools system.

They suffer from a lack of adult 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 eloquent wordsmiths like George, in post-war Bradford - and our own dear Keith Waterhouse, late of this parish, who matured in hardship in nearby pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the biggest present we can bestow on any child. My grandmas taught me to check out before I went to school, setting me on the early road 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 road, to small provincial theatres. I've got a much better idea.

If the Education Secretary wishes to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she might begin by selecting up the phone and welcoming George to tour schools, checking out from his brief stories.

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

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

When they're not tasering one-legged 92-year-old males or nicking people for publishing hurty words on the web, the police are progressively taking sidelines to supplement their earnings.

Some are working as painters and designers, others as scaffolders nand shipment motorists. More intriguingly, sidelines also consist of a DJ (PC Hammer, anyone?) 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 suppose there's any danger of them nicking a few 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 illegal migrant armada crossing the Channel daily may turn out to be the least of our problems. We now discover 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 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 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 nearby 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 difficulty with home-grown Stuka-style pigeons without importing kamikaze buzzards.

Take Labour's 'aspiration' to spend a pitiful three 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 3 per cent of stuff all is still pack all.

AN NHS surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has been struck off. If he 'd stated the same about those of us who desire 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 allege the Vikings were Muslims. Don't these individuals ever take a day off?