Saturday night at 8 o'clock discovered me not at the motion pictures but 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 mom fell on tough times.

Truth be told, I seldom venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, warned Arthur Daley: 'Lot of very wicked people' in Sarf Lunnon.

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

George read from his collection of short stories embeded 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 version of Richmal Crompton's Just William experiences.

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

I can't assist wondering, however, how often these wonderful texts are used in class these days, in between teachers packing their pupils' little heads with stylish far-Left propaganda about 'white benefit', manifest destiny and, of course, climate change.

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

Child poverty was genuine, 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 revolution, kids acquired their understanding mostly from books, writes Littlejohn

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

Until the digital/social media transformation, kids got their understanding mostly from books. Yes, TV played a huge role, as did the motion pictures, however no place near the dominance of TikTok and other apps offering pleasure principle in byte-sized portions.

And how can squinting at the current CGI produced hit on a mobile phone a couple of inches broad ever compare to the sort 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 pictures are said to be on the radio, even better images can be found in the printed word.

One of the most dismal 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 kids.

Not surprising that kid, and indeed adult, literacy levels have actually plunged alarmingly. All this has actually added to the shocking discovery that white, working class pupils - young boys in particular - are being left. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been forced to admit they have been 'betrayed' by the contemporary schools system.

They struggle with a lack of parental participation and ensuing paucity of aspiration. The white, working class young boy in George Layton's stories definitely didn't suffer any parental disregard from his aggressive mum. Nor did he do not have creativity or goal.

Education was the escape of hardship. 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 gift we can bestow on any child. My grandmothers taught me to read 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 work environment.

George Layton is thinking about taking his one-man show on the road, to little provincial theatres. I have actually got a better idea.

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

I honestly think that if they might be persuaded to search for from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and motivated by the experiences of a young kid not that various to them, regardless of the distance 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 posting hurty words on the internet, the authorities are increasingly taking sidelines to supplement their income.

Some are working as painters and designers, others as scaffolders nand shipment motorists. More intriguingly, second jobs also include 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 shop has to take the biscuit.

It's likewise reported that some officers are working as grocery store checkout assistants. I don't expect there's any risk of them nicking a few thiefs.

Mind how you go.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who bought an infant from a complete stranger are self-centered in the extreme

First the frogs, now the octopuses The unlawful migrant armada crossing the Channel daily might end up being the least of our issues. 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 local fishermen out of company.

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

We're also informed that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an 'unstoppable invasive species' having actually 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 nearby Holiday Inn eventually.

And that's before I get to the buzzard that's been dive-bombing kids in a school playground 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 spend a pitiful three per cent of GDP on defence by the year 2525 with a shovel-load of Maldon's finest. The From Complaints is taxing the economy to death, there will not be any GDP left in a few years' time. And three per cent of stuff all is still stuff all.

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