twentyfiveseven

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

Truth be told, I rarely venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, cautioned Arthur Daley: 'Great deal of really wicked people' in Sarf Lunnon.

Coincidentally, the event was a one-man program 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 reading from his collection of narratives embeded in the 1950s, when he was maturing in post-war Bradford. They're perfectly written, warm, funny, expressive, a piece of history, a working-class variation of Richmal Crompton's Just William experiences.

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

I can't help wondering, though, how frequently these remarkable texts are utilized in class nowadays, in between teachers stuffing their pupils' little heads with trendy far-Left propaganda about 'white opportunity', colonialism and, obviously, climate modification.

The kids in the monochrome school photo which formed the backdrop to George's reading were definitely white, but no one might have explained them as privileged. Those were the days when 'austerity' meant living from hand to mouth, not having to go for a basic 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and just having the ability to manage an iPhone 14 instead of 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 trainers.

Until the digital/social media transformation, children got their understanding primarily from books, writes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, children experienced real hardship, not the hardship of ambition and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live via their mobile phones, instead of strolling complimentary and experiencing life to the full.

Until the digital/social media transformation, children got their understanding primarily from books. Yes, TV played a big function, as did the movies, however nowhere near the supremacy of TikTok and other apps offering pleasure principle in byte-sized pieces.

And how can squinting at the current CGI produced blockbuster on a mobile 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 very best photos are said to be on the radio, even better photos can be found in the printed word.

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

No wonder kid, and indeed adult, literacy levels have dropped alarmingly. All this has actually contributed to the stunning discovery that white, working class pupils - kids in particular - are being left. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been forced to confess they have actually been 'betrayed' by the contemporary schools system.

They suffer from a lack of adult involvement and following paucity of aspiration. The white, working class kid in George Layton's stories definitely didn't suffer any parental overlook from his aggressive mum. Nor did he lack imagination or aspiration.

Education was the escape 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 poverty in nearby pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the best 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 profession at the wordface rather than the relative drudgery of the work environment.

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

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

I think that if they might be persuaded to search for from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and motivated by the adventures of a young kid not that different to them, regardless of the range in years.

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

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

Some are working as painters and designers, others as scaffolders nand delivery motorists. More intriguingly, sidelines likewise consist of 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 store has to take the biscuit.

It's also reported that some officers are working as grocery store 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 self-centered in the severe

First the frogs, now the octopuses The prohibited 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 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 helping themselves to what's left.

We're also told that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an 'unstoppable invasive species' 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 closest Holiday Inn previously long.

Which's before I get to the buzzard that's been dive-bombing children in a school play ground in Romford, Essex. Where the hell did that come from?

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

Take Labour's 'ambition' to invest a pitiful 3 percent 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 few years' time. And 3 percent 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 wish to leave the European yuman rites convention, Surkeir would have made him Chief law officer.

Having just recently declared that the original ancient Britons were black, the woke deconstructionists now declare the Vikings were Muslims. Don't these people ever take a day of rest?