twentyfiveseven

Saturday night at 8 o'clock found me not at the movies but at the Cinema Museum, a hidden gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, located in a former workhouse which was quickly home to the young Charlie Chaplin after his mother fell on difficult times.

Truth be told, I hardly ever endeavor south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, cautioned Arthur Daley: 'Great deal of extremely wicked people' in Sarf Lunnon.
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Coincidentally, the event was a one-man program by my old mate George Layton, star, director, scriptwriter, author, whose finest hour - at least to my mind - was playing Des, the dodgy vehicle mechanic in Minder.

George read from his collection of narratives embeded in the 1950s, when he was growing up in post-war Bradford. They're beautifully written, warm, amusing, evocative, a piece of history, a working-class variation of Richmal Crompton's Just William adventures.

The stories are based on the trials and adversities of a young boy being brought up by a single mom - a non-traditional family life at that time, unfortunately just too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually remained in print since 1975 and discovered its method on to the school curriculum, where it stays today.

I can't assist wondering, though, how typically these wonderful texts are used in class nowadays, in between instructors stuffing their pupils' little heads with fashionable far-Left propaganda about 'white advantage', colonialism and, naturally, environment change.

The kids in the monochrome school picture which formed the background to George's reading were certainly white, however nobody might have explained them as privileged. Those were the days when 'austerity' indicated living from hand to mouth, not having to choose a basic 50in flat screen TV, rather of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and just being able to afford an iPhone 14 rather than the most recent all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.

Child hardship was genuine, bread-and-dripping, holes-in-your-shoes things, not dining on Deliveroo and reluctantly wearing last season's Nike trainers.

Until the digital/social media revolution, kids gained their understanding primarily from books, composes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, kids experienced authentic difficulty, not the hardship of ambition and creativity which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live by means of their smart phones, rather 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 big role, as did the films, however no place near the domination of TikTok and other apps using pleasure principle in byte-sized chunks.

And how can squinting at the most recent CGI created smash hit on a mobile phone a few inches wide ever compare to the kind of old-school, huge screen, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience celebrated at the Cinema Museum?

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

One of the most dismal things I've checked out just recently was the author Anthony Horowitz bemoaning the reality that his 300-page books are far too long to engage the much shorter attention spans these days's kids.

Not surprising that child, and indeed adult, literacy levels have plummeted alarmingly. All this has contributed to the shocking revelation that white, working class pupils - young boys in specific - are being left. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been forced to confess they have actually been 'betrayed' by the modern schools system.

They suffer from an absence of adult involvement and consequent paucity of aspiration. The white, working class kid in George Layton's stories definitely didn't suffer any adult disregard from his domineering mum. Nor did he do not have imagination or goal.

Education was the method out of poverty. It produced eloquent wordsmiths like George, in post-war Bradford - and our own dear Keith Waterhouse, late of this parish, who in hardship in close-by 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 road to a satisfying career at the wordface instead of the relative drudgery of the work environment.

George Layton is thinking about taking his one-man program on the roadway, to small provincial theatres. I have actually got a much better concept.

If the Education Secretary desires to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she could start by picking up the phone and inviting George to tour schools, checking out from his short stories.

I truthfully believe 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 various to them, regardless of the distance in years.

You never ever know, there might even be another Charlie Chaplin among them.

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

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

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

Mind how you go.

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

First the frogs, now the octopuses The unlawful migrant armada crossing the Channel daily might turn out to be the least of our problems. 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 anglers out of company.

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

We're likewise told that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an 'unstoppable intrusive 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 nearby Holiday Inn eventually.

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

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

Take Labour's 'ambition' to spend a pathetic three 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 won't be any GDP left in a few years' time. And three per cent of stuff all is still stuff all.
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AN NHS surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has 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 recently declared that the initial ancient Britons were black, the woke revisionists now declare the Vikings were Muslims. Don't these people ever take a day off?