Saturday night at 8 o'clock found me not at the movies however at the Cinema Museum, a surprise gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, situated in a former workhouse which was quickly home to the young Charlie Chaplin after his mom fell on difficult times.

Truth be told, I hardly ever venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, alerted Arthur Daley: 'Great deal of really wicked individuals' in Sarf Lunnon.

Coincidentally, the occasion was a one-man show by my old mate George Layton, star, director, scriptwriter, author, whose finest hour - a minimum of to my mind - was playing Des, the dodgy vehicle mechanic in Minder.

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

The storylines are based upon the trials and tribulations of a kid being brought up by a single mother - an unconventional domesticity at that time, unfortunately just too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has remained in print since 1975 and discovered its method on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can't help wondering, however, how often these remarkable texts are used in class nowadays, in between teachers packing their pupils' little heads with fashionable far-Left propaganda about 'white opportunity', manifest destiny and, obviously, climate change.

The kids in the monochrome school photograph which formed the backdrop to George's reading were definitely white, but nobody could have explained them as fortunate. Those were the days when 'austerity' meant living from hand to mouth, not having to go for a fundamental 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and only being able to afford an iPhone 14 instead of the latest all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.

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

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

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

Until the digital/social media transformation, kids got their knowledge mainly from books. Yes, TV played a huge role, as did the films, however nowhere near the dominance of TikTok and other apps using instantaneous satisfaction in byte-sized chunks.

And how can squinting at the current CGI produced hit on a cellular phone a couple of inches large 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 very best images are stated to be on the radio, even much better photos can be discovered in the printed word.

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

No wonder child, and indeed adult, literacy levels have actually plummeted alarmingly. All this has added to the shocking discovery that white, working class pupils - kids in specific - are being left behind. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been required to confess they have actually been 'betrayed' by the modern schools system.

They experience an absence of adult involvement and following scarceness of goal. The white, working class boy in George Layton's stories certainly didn't suffer any parental neglect from his aggressive mum. Nor did he lack creativity or aspiration.

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

Literacy is the biggest present we can bestow on any child. My grandmothers taught me to read 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 roadway, to small provincial theatres. I've got a much better idea.

If the Education Secretary desires to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she might begin by getting the phone and welcoming George to visit schools, checking out from his short stories.

I truthfully believe that if they might be encouraged to search for from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and motivated by the experiences of a young boy not that different to them, regardless of the range in decades.

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

When they're not tasering one-legged 92-year-old males or nicking individuals for posting hurty words on the web, the cops are significantly taking 2nd jobs to supplement their earnings.

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand shipment drivers. More intriguingly, sidelines also consist of 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 store 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 danger of them nicking a few thiefs.

Mind how you go.

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

First the frogs, now the octopuses
The unlawful migrant armada crossing the Channel daily may end up being the least of our problems. 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 regional fishermen out of service.

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

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

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 'aspiration' to invest a pitiful 3 per cent 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 won't be any GDP left in a few years' time. And three per cent of things all is still pack all.

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

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