Saturday night at eight found me not at the movies however at the Cinema Museum, a surprise gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, located in a previous workhouse which was briefly 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, warned Arthur Daley: 'Great deal of really wicked people' in Sarf Lunnon.

Coincidentally, the occasion was a one-man show 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 was checking out from his collection of short stories embeded in the 1950s, when he was growing up in post-war Bradford. They're beautifully composed, warm, amusing, expressive, a slice 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 brought up by a single mother - a non-traditional domesticity back then, unfortunately only too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has been in print considering that 1975 and found its way on to the school curriculum, where it stays today.

I can't assist questioning, though, how typically these wonderful texts are used in class nowadays, in between teachers stuffing their students' little heads with trendy far-Left propaganda about 'white privilege', colonialism and, of course, environment change.

The kids in the monochrome school photograph which formed the backdrop to George's reading were certainly white, but nobody could have explained them as fortunate. Those were the days when 'austerity' indicated living from hand to mouth, not needing to opt for a standard 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and only having the ability to manage an iPhone 14 instead of the newest all-singing, all-dancing AI version.

Child poverty was genuine, bread-and-dripping, holes-in-your-shoes things, not dining on Deliveroo and unwillingly using last season's Nike fitness instructors.

Until the digital/social media revolution, kids gained their knowledge mostly from books, writes Littlejohn

In the 1950s, kids experienced real difficulty, not the poverty of aspiration and imagination which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live by means of their cellphones, instead of roaming free and experiencing life to the complete.

Until the digital/social media revolution, children gained their knowledge mostly from books. Yes, TV played a huge function, as did the movies, but no place near the supremacy of TikTok and other apps using immediate gratification in byte-sized portions.

And how can squinting at the most recent CGI created hit on a cellular phone a couple of inches broad ever compare with the type of old-school, cinema, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience commemorated at the Cinema Museum?

It can't. Just as the very best photos are stated to be on the radio, even much better photos can be discovered in the printed word.

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

No surprise child, and undoubtedly adult, literacy levels have dropped amazingly. All this has actually added to the stunning revelation that white, working class students - kids 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 schools system.

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

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 matured in hardship in nearby pre-war Leeds.

Literacy is the greatest present we can bestow on any child. My grandmothers taught me to check out before I went to school, setting me on the early road to a satisfying profession at the wordface instead of the relative drudgery of the work environment.

George Layton is thinking about taking his one-man show on the roadway, to little 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 visit schools, reading from his brief stories.

I honestly believe that if they might be persuaded to look up from their mobiles for an hour, they 'd be enthralled and motivated by the adventures of a young kid not that different to them, despite the distance in years.