Saturday night at eight o'clock found me not at the films however at the Cinema Museum, a concealed 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 informed, I rarely endeavor south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, cautioned Arthur Daley: 'Lot of really wicked individuals' in Sarf Lunnon.

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

George was checking out from his collection of narratives set in the 1950s, when he was maturing in post-war Bradford. They're wonderfully written, warm, amusing, expressive, a piece of history, a working-class variation of Richmal Crompton's Just William adventures.

The storylines are based on the trials and adversities of a young boy being brought up by a single mother - a non-traditional domesticity back then, unfortunately only too common today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually remained in print since 1975 and discovered its method on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.

I can't help wondering, though, how frequently these marvelous texts are utilized in class nowadays, in between instructors stuffing their pupils' little heads with fashionable far-Left propaganda about 'white benefit', 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 described them as fortunate. Those were the days when 'austerity' indicated living from hand to mouth, not having to opt for a fundamental 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and only having the ability to pay for an iPhone 14 rather than the most recent all-singing, all-dancing AI version.

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

Until the digital/social media revolution, kids gained their understanding mainly from books, writes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, kids experienced genuine hardship, not the hardship of aspiration and creativity which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live by means of their smart phones, instead of wandering totally free and experiencing life to the full.

Until the digital/social media transformation, children got their knowledge primarily from books. Yes, TV played a huge role, as did the films, however no place near the supremacy of TikTok and other apps using pleasure principle in byte-sized portions.

And how can squinting at the current CGI generated hit on a mobile phone a couple of inches broad ever compare with the sort of old-school, cinema, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience celebrated at the Cinema Museum?

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

Among the most dismaying things I've checked out 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 kid, and indeed adult, literacy levels have actually dropped amazingly. All this has added to the stunning discovery that white, working class students - boys in specific - are being left behind. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been forced to admit they have been 'betrayed' by the modern-day schools system.

They experience an absence of adult involvement and consequent scarceness of goal. The white, working class kid in George Layton's stories definitely didn't suffer any adult overlook from his imperious mum. Nor did he lack imagination or goal.

Education was the escape 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 greatest 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 fulfilling career at the wordface instead of the relative drudgery of the workplace.

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

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 visit schools, reading from his short stories.

I truthfully believe that if they could be encouraged to search for from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and influenced by the adventures of a young kid not that various to them, regardless of the range in decades.

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

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

Some are working as painters and designers, others as scaffolders nand delivery chauffeurs. More intriguingly, sidelines likewise include 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 likewise reported that some officers are working as supermarket checkout assistants. I don't suppose there's any risk of them nicking a couple of shoplifters.

Mind how you go.

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

First the frogs, now the octopuses The illegal migrant armada crossing the Channel 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 organization.

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

We're likewise informed that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an 'unstoppable invasive types' 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 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 come from?

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

Take Labour's 'aspiration' to invest a worthless 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 won't be any GDP left in a few years' time. And 3 percent of stuff all is still stuff all.

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

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