Saturday night at eight o’clock discovered me not at the movies but at the Cinema Museum, a covert gem near the Oval cricket ground in South London, located in a former 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, cautioned Arthur Daley: ‘Great deal of really wicked individuals’ in Sarf Lunnon.
Coincidentally, the celebration 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 cars and truck mechanic in Minder.
George was checking out from his collection of narratives embeded in the 1950s, when he was growing up in post-war Bradford. They’re magnificently written, warm, amusing, evocative, a slice of history, a working-class variation of Richmal Crompton’s Just William experiences.
The storylines are based upon the trials and adversities of a boy being brought up by a single mother – an unconventional family life back then, sadly just too typical today. The Fib And Other Stories has remained in print because 1975 and discovered its way on to the school curriculum, where it stays today.
I can’t help wondering, though, how frequently these glorious texts are utilized in class these days, in between teachers packing their pupils’ little heads with fashionable far-Left propaganda about ‘white advantage’, manifest destiny and, naturally, environment change.
The kids in the monochrome school photo which formed the background to George’s reading were certainly white, however no one might have explained them as fortunate. Those were the days when ‘austerity’ meant living from hand to mouth, not needing to choose a basic 50in flat screen TV, instead of a 65in OLED Ultra model, and only being able to afford an iPhone 14 instead of the most current all-singing, all-dancing AI variation.
Child hardship was real, bread-and-dripping, holes-in-your-shoes stuff, not dining on Deliveroo and reluctantly using last season’s Nike trainers.
Until the digital/social media revolution, children gained their understanding mostly from books, composes Littlejohn
In the 1950s, children experienced real challenge, not the hardship of aspiration and creativity which blights this generation, through no fault of their own. Today, kids live via their cellphones, instead of strolling totally free and experiencing life to the full.
Until the digital/social media transformation, kids got their understanding primarily from books. Yes, TV played a huge role, as did the films, however nowhere near the domination of TikTok and other apps providing immediate satisfaction in byte-sized portions.
And how can squinting at the current CGI generated smash hit on a mobile phone a couple of inches large ever compare with the sort of old-school, huge screen, Technicolor and Cinemascope, best-out-of-Hollywood experience commemorated at the Cinema Museum?
It can’t. Just as the best photos are said to be on the radio, even better images can be found in the printed word.
One of the most dismaying 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 shorter attention periods of today’s children.
No surprise kid, and indeed adult, literacy levels have plunged alarmingly. All this has actually contributed to the stunning revelation that white, working class pupils – boys in particular – are being left behind. Even Labour’s Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has been forced to admit they have actually been ‘betrayed’ by the modern schools system.
They struggle with an absence of adult participation and ensuing paucity of goal. The white, working class kid in George Layton’s stories certainly didn’t suffer any adult overlook from his prideful mum. Nor did he do not have imagination or aspiration.
Education was the escape 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 poverty in nearby pre-war Leeds.
Literacy is the best present we can bestow on any kid. My grandmas 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 considering taking his one-man show on the roadway, to little provincial theatres. I have actually got a much better idea.
If the Education Secretary wishes to reverse the betrayal of white, working class kids she could start by getting the phone and welcoming George to tour schools, reading from his narratives.
I honestly believe that if they might be encouraged to look up from their mobiles for an hour, they ‘d be enthralled and inspired by the experiences of a young boy not that different to them, regardless of the distance in years.
You never ever understand, there might even be another Charlie Chaplin amongst them.
When they’re not tasering one-legged 92-year-old men or nicking individuals for posting hurty words on the internet, the cops are progressively taking 2nd tasks to supplement their earnings.
Some are working as painters and designers, others as scaffolders nand delivery motorists. More intriguingly, 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 shop needs to take the biscuit.
It’s also reported that some officers are working as supermarket checkout assistants. I do not expect there’s any threat of them nicking a few shoplifters.
Mind how you go.
RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Couple in their 70s who bought an infant from a stranger are selfish in the extreme
First the frogs, now the octopuses
The illegal migrant armada crossing the Channel daily may 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 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 invasive species’ having actually gotten away 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 previously long.
And that’s before I get to the buzzard that’s been dive-bombing children in a school play ground in Romford, Essex. Where the hell did that originated from?
We have actually got enough difficulty with home-grown Stuka-style pigeons without importing kamikaze buzzards.
Take Labour’s ‘aspiration’ to spend a worthless 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 will not be any GDP left in a few years’ time. And three per cent of stuff all is still stuff all.
AN NHS cosmetic surgeon who compared Islamist terrorists to the Nazis has actually been struck off. If he ‘d said the very same about those of us who wish to leave the European yuman rites convention, Surkeir would have made him Attorney general of the United States.
Having recently declared that the initial ancient Britons were black, the woke revisionists now allege the Vikings were Muslims. Don’t these individuals ever take a day off?