twentyfiveseven

Saturday night at eight o'clock discovered me not at the motion pictures however at the Cinema Museum, a hidden 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 tough times.

Truth be informed, I hardly ever venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, alerted Arthur Daley: 'Lot of very wicked people' in Sarf Lunnon.

Coincidentally, the occasion 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 cars and truck mechanic in Minder.

George read from his collection of brief stories set in the 1950s, when he was maturing in post-war Bradford. They're magnificently written, warm, amusing, evocative, a piece of history, a working-class version of Richmal Crompton's Just William experiences.

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

I can't assist wondering, though, how typically these remarkable texts are used in class these days, in between instructors packing their students' little heads with stylish far-Left propaganda about 'white privilege', colonialism and, of course, climate modification.

The kids in the monochrome school picture which formed the background to George's reading were certainly white, but nobody might have described them as fortunate. Those were the days when 'austerity' suggested living from hand to mouth, not needing to settle for a standard 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and only having the ability to manage an iPhone 14 rather than the most recent all-singing, all-dancing AI version.

Child hardship was real, bread-and-dripping, holes-in-your-shoes stuff, not dining on Deliveroo and unwillingly 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 authentic hardship, not the poverty of aspiration and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live by means of their mobile phones, rather of roaming free and experiencing life to the complete.

Until the digital/social media transformation, kids got their knowledge mostly from books. Yes, TV played a big role, as did the movies, but nowhere near the dominance of TikTok and other apps providing pleasure principle in .

And how can squinting at the most current CGI produced smash hit on a cellphone a couple of inches large ever compare with the type of old-school, cinema, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience celebrated at the Cinema Museum?

It can't. Just as the finest photos are stated to be on the radio, even much better pictures can be found in the printed word.

One of the most depressing things I have actually read 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 surprise kid, and certainly adult, literacy levels have dropped alarmingly. All this has contributed to the stunning revelation that white, working class pupils - young boys in particular - are being left behind. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been required to admit they have been 'betrayed' by the contemporary schools system.

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

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 grew up in hardship in nearby pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the biggest present we can bestow on any child. My grannies taught me to check out before I went to school, setting me on the early roadway to a fulfilling career at the wordface rather than the relative drudgery of the workplace.

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

If the Education Secretary wishes to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she might start by choosing up the phone and inviting George to visit schools, checking out from his brief stories.

I truthfully think that if they could be convinced to search for from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and inspired by the adventures of a young kid not that various to them, regardless of the distance in years.

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

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

Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand shipment motorists. More intriguingly, sidelines also include a DJ (PC Hammer, anybody?) and a reiki trainer, whatever that is.

My favourites are beekeeper and kickboxing coach, although the copper running a tea shop needs 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 threat 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 illegal migrant armada crossing the Channel daily might 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 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 told 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 soon.

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 have actually got enough difficulty with home-grown Stuka-style pigeons without importing kamikaze buzzards.

Take Labour's 'ambition' to spend a pathetic 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 couple of years' time. And 3 per cent of stuff all is still pack all.

AN NHS cosmetic 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 original ancient Britons were black, the woke revisionists now allege the Vikings were Muslims. Don't these individuals ever take a day of rest?