The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 42

6 GS2 i St People I Observations I Curiosities Ol KJl I Curriculunt vitae he misses the "Pride, pomp, and Meteorology The one essential thing about the weather is that it is in constant flux, which is why we need weather reports. But The Weather Project is pretty static. And you expect to be warmed by this huge sun, but it's drafty and cold in the turbine hall. It's a symbolic sun rather than weather in the traditional sense of the word. But that doesn't mean it didn't work.

The mist certainly worked, making me think of London pea-soupcrs, and Jack the Ripper. It also reminded me of the film The Truman Show, to the extent that you can walk right to the end of the hall where the sun hovers above you, and look underneath and see hundreds of lamps like lamp-posts and wires. It made me think of humans controlling the weather rather than weather itself. The ceiling is covered in mirrors, and when you look up it gives you a sense of how insignificant and ant-like we all are in this huge hall. Which is the same effect that real weather has in that, compared to the natural elements, we are pretty damned insignificant.

Stan Lloyd Treading the boards The Bard's new theatre -of war But is it weather? My immediate reaction to Olafur Eliasson's new exhibit, The Weather Project, in the turbine hall at Tate Modern, was that I would love it as a backdrop to my TV weather reports. It wasn't quite what I was expecting. I thought it would be a more scientific and physical exhibition with clouds seeding, or a rainbow. I would say it's more psychological than physiological. There is abig sun at the end of the turbine hall which is incredibly dramatic as you walk to it.

It's simple and almost hypnotic. It made me think of cartoon-like, mythological or filmic weather, as opposed to the sort of weather that I deal with. There aren't cloud formations as such, but a kind of misty haziness, and It was a very surreal sun, which made me think more of things such as armageddon, Chernobyl, nuclear explosions, the sun before an oncoming tidal wave, space, Welsh and Irish myths and legends, and global warming. It felt like something dramatic was about to happen. But it didn't make me want to talk weather.

In fact, as I ate my lunch, a huge gust of wind blew in every time the door opened and that was a far greater weather experience. circumstances of glorious war He trusts the malign Iago because he has been his loyal lieutenant in battle this is the ultimate anti-soldier-buddv storv. Shakespeare was rather taken with the idea that soldiers cannot cope with not being soldiers, His greatest warrior is uorioianus, a man apparently capable of defeating opposing armies almost on his own. Yet (Wesley Clark be warned!) when he returns Ml to the slippery world of Roman politics, with all its clever speakers, he is bamboozled. His city expels and destroys him.

Apparently, Macbeth is to follow Othello. Instead ofa brave soldierwho is weak in peacetime, we have a brave soldierwho is downright evil. Initially everyone praises Macbeth's ability to king's enemies "from the nave to The same prowess allows him to wade through blood to the throne. At the end of the play, when he is done for, his despairing bravery is rewarded with the label of "butcher" and the display of his severed head. Pour encourager les autres? Shakespeare, it should be said, is unlikely to have been a pacifist.

In his youth he will have shared in the national rejoicing when English naval action (and "God's prevented a Spanish invasion. His Henry is pretty much a celebration of righteous militarism, and might go down well on the base. Still, even here (in a scene cut from Laurence Olivier's patriotic wartime film) Henry, infuriated by the French massacre of the boys in the English camp, orders the exe cution of the French prisoners. And for the sake of morale, better avoid the prequels to this, Henry IV parts one and two. The latter in cludes the notorious recruiting scene, where the corrupt Falstaff chooses only life's losers to march to war with him (they are the ones who could not bribe him to leave them at home).

The former shows him with his squadron of "totler'd prodigals" pronouncing a cynical man's verdict on the poor bloody infantry fighting history's great battles: "Food for powder, food for powder; they'll fill a pit as well as better." John Mullan Channel surfing TeenBB-hetterthan the real thing These past few days the talk has all been about Teen Big Brother. It's so much better than adult BB! The of Allan Heighten What connects a Dyson vacuum cleaner to a Sky digibox; a piece of junk mail to Leeds United and a mini-break in Venice to your weekly shop in Asda? The answer is one man: Allan Leighton and, according to the Financial Times, he's the best-connected businessman in Britain. You may well never have heard of him, but so omnipresent in the boardrooms is Leighton that the FT has devised its own special game to honour him. Six Degrees of Allan Leighton (it's "sweeping the exclaims the pink paper) owes a great deal to the original Kevin Bacon-inspired game that haunted the internet and the dinner-party table five years ago. The principles are thus: Leighton, by virtue of the 10 different directorships that he holds, is the Kevin Bacon of the non-executive world.

Where Bacon symbolised the interconncct-edness of all movie stars from Charlie Chaplin to Orlando Bloom, Leighton is junction box for the lines which connect companies through their boards, having worked for Dyson, BSkyB, and Asda among others. Yet even with all this form, when the Times yesterday listed the 100 most powerful directors in the country, Leighton did not figure. How can this be? Think again of Bacon. He has never won an Oscar, never been truly A-list, but he's always worked. It is this versatility and steadiness, which characterises the connected individual.

Much as Bacon has been the only good thing about such truly awful movies as Picture Perfect and She's Having a Baby, Leighton has found himself feted for being the only person to be honest about what remains of the Post Office. Just as Bacon took Footloose, a film that should, by lights, have been a disaster (city boy teaches small town how to dance?) and turned it into an enormous surprise hit, Leighton became chairman of lastminute.com just at the point when it seemed utterly buggered and made a modestly successful internet company. As chief executive of Asda he brokered the deal that sold the chain to Wal-mart and, these days, he can be found on the committee that is charged with deciding whether James Murdoch should run his father's empire. It doesn't always work out. Not even Bacon, you will recall, could rescue Tremors the 1989 movie about a town terrorised by 30-foot earthworms.

And Leighton? He's still deputy chairman of Leeds United FC. Janine Gibson housemates are all really interesting! They've all got serious beef with each other! The arguments are fierce! In some eyes, to derive enjoyment from all of this makes us Very Bad People (the rightwing press say we should be "furious" about the "unsavoury exercise in Yeah, yeah. But did you see the bit when Paul laid into Tracey after she said that if a female friend came on to her, she'd "smack them in the The week-long experiment was recorded this summer after the end of the fourth adult series, making it the first Big Brother not to be broadcast live. This gives it a distinct advantage over BB4, where the housemates seemed terrified to spark and clash in case they upset the viewing and voting public.The resulting series was so tedious I didn't even bother watching the final. It's a different matter with these eight.

18-year-olds who banged into life as soon as they entered the house. The rows and confrontations have stockpiled during the three episodes so far, some trivial but many quite profound. There's been the bedroom light fight and Paul's "diva bitch thing" over the task practice, but there have also been serious discussions about race, religion, homosexuality and promiscuity. The words are often blundered out with a naivety that betrays their age, but the opinions behind them have often revealed unexpected intelligence and compassion. Of course, TV conservatives are upset because last night they broadcast footage of Tommy and Jade having sex under a duvet.

This is the least interesting thing about the series what Big Brother aficianados care about is how the pair cope with the before and after. Us Big Brother viewers aren't voyeurs, we're just interested in other people. Channel 4 now has a problem. Next year's BB5 has got to meet the standards set by Teen BB. Last series they tried to snag our interest with big ideas, such as the reward room or the housemate swap with Africa.

It didn't work. Teen BB shows it's all about getting housemates with life and soul, then revelling in it. Charlie Porter Is the Bard good for the troops? The Pentagon has been persuaded so by canny thespians, and is stumping up $lm to bring perfor mances of Shakespeare to US military bases. What will the soldiers be learning? The first production planned is of Othello, apparently to be set on a modern-day British paratroop base. It is a daring choice.

Othello is a great soldier, but is all at sea with the passions and insecurities of married life. Oh how it.