That tormentor of teenagers down the ages, Shakespeare, William of that ilk, put it well when he wrote, probably not with great originality, that all the world's a stage and the men on it merely players. He also said something about nothing being new under the sun.

In a three-night stint in London (which is why you haven't seen me on these virtual pages for some time) we saw four works that encapsulated Will's dicta to a tee.

We saw a Prime Minister whose political future was held firmly in the grasp of a loony getting progressively loonier, with the Leader of the Opposition salivating gleefully at the prospect of being handed power on a plate. It is of Alan Bennet's "The Madness of George III" that I write, and the PM in question is William Pitt and the spendthrift-in-waiting, promising to be all things to all men, is Fox. The loony is the King and it is a superb play, with a standing ovation at the end, which I haven't seen in the West End for some time.

Another standing ovation greeted a show packed with illusion and prestidigitation, fodder for the adoring masses. A middle-aged chap striving manfully to look young, flanked by gorgeous babes, tried to persuade us that he could do anything and make the world jump through a hoop for him. "The Magic of Houdini" performed by a Dutchman named Klok is the show, and if you're up the Smoke any time soon, try it out, it's superb.

We also saw a group of working men overcome their innate prejudice towards education, with their union rep becoming progressively more civilised as the group went beyond their quotidian lives and turned into painters of repute - "The Pitmen Painters" is worth learning from. Simon Callow, in "Being Shakespeare", kicked off a set of plays beautifully for us, proving that not all one-man efforts are doomed to failure.

We also saw the Lucien Freud exhibition, which adds new depth to the word "astounding", and the David Hockney show at the Royal Academy, which continued to do the same thing to that word. There was more, such as the Picasso at the Tate, but those two tower over the scene in London just now. Again, if you're there, do go and if it's still showing them, also go to Harrods (a.k.a. Chav Central) to see some great images of Malta.