Saturday night at 8 o'clock found me not at the motion pictures however at the Cinema Museum, a surprise gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, situated in a former workhouse which was briefly home to the young Charlie Chaplin after his mother fell on tough times.
Truth be informed, I rarely venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, warned Arthur Daley: 'Lot of extremely 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 embeded in the 1950s, when he was maturing in post-war Bradford. They're wonderfully written, warm, amusing, evocative, a piece of history, a working-class version of Richmal Crompton's Just William experiences.
The stories are based upon the trials and adversities of a boy being brought up by a single mother - an unconventional domesticity at that time, unfortunately only too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually been in print considering that 1975 and found its way on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.
I can't assist wondering, though, how typically these remarkable texts are utilized in class these days, in between instructors packing their students' little heads with trendy far-Left propaganda about 'white privilege', manifest destiny and, of course, environment modification.
The kids in the monochrome school photograph which formed the backdrop to George's reading were certainly white, but no one could have described them as privileged. Those were the days when 'austerity' meant living from hand to mouth, not having to opt 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 hardship was genuine, bread-and-dripping, holes-in-your-shoes things, not dining on Deliveroo and unwillingly wearing last season's Nike fitness instructors.
Until the digital/social media revolution, children got their knowledge primarily from books, composes Littlejohn
In the 1950s, children experienced authentic challenge, not the hardship of aspiration and creativity which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live by means of their mobile phones, instead of strolling free and experiencing life to the complete.
Until the digital/social media revolution, children got their understanding mainly from books. Yes, TV played a big role, as did the movies, but nowhere near the dominance of TikTok and other apps offering pleasure principle in byte-sized pieces.
And how can squinting at the most recent CGI created smash hit on a mobile phone a few inches wide ever compare with the sort of old-school, cinema, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience celebrated at the Cinema Museum?
It can't. Just as the best images are said to be on the radio, even much better images can be found in the printed word.
Among the most dismal things I've checked out recently was the author Anthony Horowitz regreting 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 undoubtedly adult, literacy levels have plunged alarmingly. All this has actually contributed to the shocking revelation that white, working class students - kids 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 suffer from an absence of parental involvement and following paucity of aspiration. The white, working class boy in George Layton's stories certainly didn't suffer any adult overlook from his domineering mum. Nor did he do not have creativity or aspiration.
Education was the method 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 hardship in close-by pre-war Leeds.
Literacy is the best present we can bestow on any child. My grandmas taught me to check out 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 workplace.
George Layton is considering taking his one-man program on the roadway, to little provincial theatres. I have actually got a much better concept.
If the Education Secretary wants to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she could start by getting the phone and inviting George to explore schools, reading from his narratives.
I truthfully think that if they might be encouraged to look up from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and influenced by the adventures of a young boy not that different to them, in spite of the distance in decades.
You never understand, there might even be another Charlie Chaplin amongst them.
When they're not tasering one-legged 92-year-old men or nicking people for posting hurty words on the internet, the police are increasingly taking sidelines to supplement their earnings.
Some are working as painters and designers, others as scaffolders nand shipment motorists. More intriguingly, second tasks 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 needs to take the biscuit.
It's likewise reported that some officers are working as grocery store checkout assistants. I do not suppose there's any danger of them nicking a couple of shoplifters.
Mind how you go.
RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who bought an infant from a stranger are self-centered 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 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 regional anglers out of organization.
It's bad enough French trawlers hoovering up our fish without migrant molluscs helping themselves to what's left.
We're likewise informed 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 closest Holiday Inn eventually.
And that's before I get to the buzzard that's been dive-bombing kids in a school play area in Romford, Essex. Where the hell did that come from?
We've got enough difficulty with home-grown Stuka-style pigeons without importing kamikaze buzzards.
Take Labour's 'aspiration' to invest a pitiful three per cent of GDP on defence by the year 2525 with a shovel-load of Maldon's finest. The way Rachel From Complaints is taxing the economy to death, there will not be any GDP left in a few years' time. And three percent of stuff all is still stuff all.
AN NHS surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has been struck off. If he 'd stated the same about those people who wish to leave the European yuman rites convention, Surkeir would have made him Chief law officer.
Having recently claimed that the initial ancient Britons were black, the woke deconstructionists now allege the Vikings were Muslims. Don't these people ever take a day off?
