Saturday night at eight o'clock discovered me not at the motion pictures however at the Cinema Museum, a covert 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 mom fell on tough times.
Truth be informed, I hardly ever endeavor south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, alerted Arthur Daley: 'Great deal of really wicked people' in Sarf Lunnon.
Coincidentally, the event was a one-man show by my old mate George Layton, star, director, scriptwriter, author, whose finest hour - a minimum of to my mind - was playing Des, the dodgy automobile mechanic in Minder.
George was reading from his collection of short stories set in the 1950s, when he was maturing in post-war Bradford. They're beautifully written, warm, funny, expressive, a slice of history, a working-class variation of Richmal Crompton's Just William experiences.
The stories are based on the trials and adversities of a kid being raised by a single mom - an unconventional family life at that time, unfortunately only too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has actually been in print considering that 1975 and its way on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.
I can't assist wondering, though, how typically these remarkable texts are used in class nowadays, in between instructors stuffing their students' little heads with fashionable far-Left propaganda about 'white advantage', manifest destiny and, of course, environment modification.
The kids in the monochrome school photograph which formed the background to George's reading were certainly white, but no one could have described them as fortunate. Those were the days when 'austerity' meant living from hand to mouth, not having to go for a basic 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and just having the ability to pay for an iPhone 14 rather than the newest all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.
Child poverty was real, bread-and-dripping, holes-in-your-shoes things, not dining on Deliveroo and reluctantly using last season's Nike fitness instructors.
Until the digital/social media transformation, kids got their knowledge mainly from books, composes Littlejohn
In the 1950s, children experienced authentic challenge, not the poverty of ambition and creativity which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live through their mobile phones, rather of wandering totally free and experiencing life to the full.
Until the digital/social media transformation, kids acquired their knowledge primarily from books. Yes, TV played a huge role, as did the motion pictures, but no place near the supremacy of TikTok and other apps offering immediate gratification in byte-sized pieces.
And how can squinting at the most current CGI created smash hit on a cellphone a couple of inches wide ever compare with the type of old-school, huge screen, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience celebrated at the Cinema Museum?
It can't. Just as the very best photos are stated to be on the radio, even much better images can be discovered in the printed word.
Among the most dismal things I have actually read 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 children.
No marvel kid, and indeed adult, literacy levels have actually plunged alarmingly. All this has actually added to the shocking discovery that white, working class students - boys in specific - are being left behind. Even Labour's Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been forced to admit they have actually been 'betrayed' by the contemporary schools system.
They struggle with an absence of adult participation and consequent scarceness of goal. The white, working class kid in George Layton's stories definitely didn't suffer any adult neglect from his imperious mum. Nor did he do not have creativity or aspiration.
Education was the way out 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 hardship in neighboring pre-war Leeds.
Literacy is the biggest present we can bestow on any kid. My grannies taught me to read before I went to school, setting me on the early road to a fulfilling career at the wordface rather than the relative drudgery of the work environment.
George Layton is thinking about taking his one-man show on the roadway, to small provincial theatres. I've got a better concept.
If the Education Secretary wishes to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she could begin by getting the phone and inviting George to explore schools, reading from his short stories.
I truthfully believe that if they could be encouraged to look up from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and inspired by the experiences of a young kid not that different to them, regardless of the distance in years.
You never know, 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 web, the police are progressively taking sidelines to supplement their income.
Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand shipment chauffeurs. More intriguingly, second tasks likewise include 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 needs to take the biscuit.
It's likewise reported that some officers are working as grocery store checkout assistants. I do not expect there's any risk of them nicking a few shoplifters.
Mind how you go.
RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who purchased a baby from a stranger are selfish in the severe
First the frogs, now the octopuses
The prohibited migrant armada crossing the Channel daily might end up being the least of our issues. We now find out 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 service.
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 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 nearest Holiday Inn before long.
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 trouble with home-grown Stuka-style pigeons without importing kamikaze buzzards.
Take Labour's 'ambition' to spend a useless 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 couple of years' time. And 3 percent of things all is still pack all.
AN NHS surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has been struck off. If he 'd said the exact same about those people who want 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 revisionists now declare the Vikings were Muslims. Don't these people ever take a day of rest?
