twentyfiveseven

Saturday night at eight o'clock discovered me not at the movies but at the Cinema Museum, a concealed gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, located in a previous workhouse which was quickly home to the young Charlie Chaplin after his mom fell on hard times.

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

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

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

The storylines are based on the trials and adversities of a young boy being raised by a single mother - an unconventional domesticity back then, regretfully just too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has remained in print considering that 1975 and discovered its method on to the school curriculum, where it stays today.

I can't help wondering, though, how typically these marvelous texts are utilized in class these days, in between instructors stuffing their students' little heads with stylish far-Left propaganda about 'white benefit', colonialism and, of course, climate modification.

The kids in the monochrome school photograph which formed the backdrop to George's reading were definitely white, however nobody might have explained them as fortunate. Those were the days when 'austerity' suggested living from hand to mouth, not needing to choose a fundamental 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and just having the ability to pay for an iPhone 14 rather than the most current all-singing, all-dancing AI version.

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

Until the digital/social media revolution, children gained their knowledge mainly from books, composes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, children experienced real hardship, not the hardship of aspiration and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live through their smart phones, instead of roaming complimentary and experiencing life to the complete.

Until the digital/social media revolution, kids gained their knowledge mostly from books. Yes, TV played a big role, as did the movies, but no place near the domination of TikTok and other apps offering instant gratification in byte-sized pieces.

And how can squinting at the most recent CGI created blockbuster on a a few inches broad ever compare with the sort of old-school, big screen, 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 pictures can be discovered in the printed word.

One of the most depressing things I have actually read just recently was the author Anthony Horowitz complaining the truth that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the shorter attention periods these days's kids.

Not surprising that kid, and certainly adult, literacy levels have actually dropped amazingly. All this has actually added to the shocking discovery that white, working class students - young boys in specific - are being left behind. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been forced to confess they have been 'betrayed' by the modern-day schools system.

They experience a lack of parental involvement and ensuing paucity of aspiration. The white, working class young boy in George Layton's stories certainly didn't suffer any parental neglect from his domineering mum. Nor did he lack imagination or aspiration.

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

Literacy is the best present we can bestow on any child. My grannies taught me to read 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 show on the road, to small provincial theatres. I have actually got a better concept.

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

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

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

When they're not tasering one-legged 92-year-old men or nicking individuals for posting hurty words on the internet, the authorities are increasingly taking 2nd jobs to supplement their income.

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

It's also reported that some officers are working as supermarket checkout assistants. I don't suppose there's any danger of them nicking a couple of shoplifters.

Mind how you go.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who purchased a baby from a stranger are self-centered in the extreme

First the frogs, now the octopuses The illegal migrant armada crossing the Channel daily may end up being the least of our issues. We now learn that a fleet of foreign octopuses from the Med is devouring crab stocks off the coast of Devon and Cornwall and threatening to put local fishermen out of business.

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 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 nearest Holiday Inn soon.

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 pathetic 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 things all is still stuff all.

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

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