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, situated in a previous workhouse which was briefly home to the young Charlie Chaplin after his mother fell on difficult times.
Truth be told, I rarely venture south of the river. As Dave, from the Winchester Club, warned Arthur Daley: ‘Lot of really wicked individuals’ in Sarf Lunnon.
Coincidentally, the occasion 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 car mechanic in Minder.
George read from his collection of narratives set in the 1950s, when he was growing up in post-war Bradford. They’re beautifully written, warm, funny, evocative, a slice of history, a working-class variation of Richmal Crompton’s Just William adventures.
The storylines are based upon the trials and tribulations of a boy being raised by a single mother – an unconventional domesticity at that time, sadly just too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has remained in print since 1975 and discovered its way on to the school curriculum, where it remains today.
I can’t help questioning, though, how often these marvelous texts are utilized in class nowadays, in between instructors packing their pupils’ little heads with trendy far-Left propaganda about ‘white opportunity’, colonialism and, of course, environment modification.
The kids in the monochrome school photo which formed the backdrop to George’s reading were definitely white, however no one might have explained them as privileged. Those were the days when ‘austerity’ suggested living from hand to mouth, not having to go for a fundamental 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra design, and only having the ability to pay for an iPhone 14 instead of the current all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.
Child poverty was genuine, 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, children acquired their understanding mostly from books, writes Littlejohn
In the 1950s, children experienced authentic difficulty, not the poverty of ambition and creativity which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live through their cellphones, rather of wandering totally free and experiencing life to the full.
Until the digital/social media revolution, kids acquired their understanding mostly from books. Yes, TV played a big role, as did the movies, however nowhere near the dominance of TikTok and other apps providing pleasure principle in byte-sized chunks.
And how can squinting at the current CGI produced hit on a cellular phone a few inches large ever compare with the type of old-school, cinema, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience celebrated at the Cinema Museum?
It can’t. Just as the very best photos are said to be on the radio, even much better pictures can be found in the printed word.
One of the most depressing things I have actually checked out 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.
No wonder kid, and certainly adult, literacy levels have plummeted alarmingly. All this has actually contributed to the stunning revelation that white, working class students – young boys in particular – are being left. Even Labour’s Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has actually been required to admit they have been ‘betrayed’ by the modern-day schools system.
They experience an absence of parental involvement and following paucity of goal. The white, working class young boy in George Layton’s stories definitely didn’t suffer any adult overlook from his aggressive mum. Nor did he do not have creativity or goal.
Education was the escape of hardship. It produced eloquent wordsmiths like George, in post-war Bradford – and our own dear Keith Waterhouse, late of this parish, who grew up in poverty in nearby pre-war Leeds.
Literacy is the greatest present we can bestow on any kid. My grandmas taught me to check out before I went to school, setting me on the early road to a fulfilling career at the wordface instead of the relative drudgery of the work environment.
George Layton is thinking about taking his one-man show on the road, to small provincial theatres. I have actually got a better idea.
If the Education Secretary wants to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she could begin by selecting up the phone and welcoming George to visit schools, checking out from his narratives.
I truthfully think that if they could be convinced to look up from their mobiles for an hour, they ‘d be enthralled and influenced by the experiences of a young kid not that various to them, in spite of the range in years.
You never understand, there might even be another Charlie Chaplin among them.
When they’re not tasering one-legged 92-year-old men or nicking individuals for posting hurty words on the web, the police are increasingly taking sidelines to supplement their income.
Some are working as painters and decorators, others as scaffolders nand delivery motorists. More intriguingly, sidelines also 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 needs to take the biscuit.
It’s also reported that some officers are working as supermarket checkout assistants. I don’t expect there’s any threat of them nicking a couple of thiefs.
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 illegal 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 feasting on crab stocks off the coast of Devon and Cornwall and threatening to put regional fishermen out of service.
It’s bad enough French trawlers hoovering up our fish without migrant molluscs assisting themselves to what’s left.
We’re likewise informed that parakeets from India and Pakistan are an ‘unstoppable invasive species’ having left 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.
Which’s before I get to the buzzard that’s been in a school play ground in Romford, Essex. Where the hell did that come from?
We have actually got enough difficulty with home-grown Stuka-style pigeons without importing kamikaze buzzards.
Take Labour’s ‘aspiration’ to spend 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 will not be any GDP left in a few years’ time. And 3 per cent of stuff all is still stuff all.
AN NHS surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has actually been struck off. If he ‘d said the exact same about those people who desire to leave the European yuman rites convention, Surkeir would have made him Attorney General.
Having recently claimed that the initial ancient Britons were black, the woke deconstructionists now allege the Vikings were Muslims. Don’t these individuals ever take a day of rest?