It starts to seem as if no crappy movie is complete without a starring role for Sir Ian McKellen (I don't know if he shows Sir Ben Kingsley-style pomposity about the use of the honorific, but I stuck it in just in case). This week's turkey is X-Men: The Last Stand, reviewed today by Damon Smith. Last week it was the Da Vinci Code, which I shall not see, just as I would never dream of reading the book. Why bother with a writer so stupid that he gives the painter a name by which he is never known the equivalent of calling Jesus Christ 'of Nazareth'?

Opinions differ widely about McKellen's performance as the absurdly named Sir Leigh Teabing. My old friend Matthew Bond, writing in the Mail On Sunday, said he "helpfully slows things down by stamping his considerable authority I'll come back to those words in a minute on proceedings". But for Cosmo Landesman, in the Sunday Times, he offers "hammy old-school thespian acting at its worst. He talks as if he were trying to reach the audience in the back seats of the National Theatre".

But the National Theatre is a place where Sir Ian's skills are seen, alas, all to rarely these days. He is too occupied in squandering his talents, either on meretricious celluloid trash or other vacuous enterprises such as his recent role in a television soap opera or in playing pantomime. Yes, as Matthew says, he brings considerable authority to his roles. But is this needed to give us Coronation Street's Mel Hutchwright or Aladdin's outrageously caparisoned Widow Twankey?

My first sighting of McKellen on stage saw him scarcely less battily rigged out with curious sticks in his hair, I remember playing the part of Prince Yoremitsu in Iris Murdoch's unsuccessful (and never, I think revived) The Three Arrows with the Actors' Company in 1972. A few years later, I delighted in is debut season at Stratford, when he gave a thrilling performance as Macbeth (opposite Judi Dench) in the intimate setting of The Other Place.

There is great excitement among all of us who regret McKellen's current involvement in shoddy enterprises that he is returning to Stratford, 30 years on, to give us what is likely to prove a no less definitive account of another of Shakespeare's great tragic figures, King Lear. The director will be Trevor Nunn, in his first work at Stratford for 15 years. This week it was announced that Nunn will also be directing Chekhov's The Seagull, with McKellen as Sorin. The two productions will play in repertoire in the new Courtyard Theatre from March 2007 before embarking on a world tour.

Nunn said on Tuesday: "For many years now I have been hoping to return to my theatrical roots in the RSC, and for even longer, I have been looking forward to the fulfilment of the vow Ian McKellen and I made that one day we would do King Lear together." Add to that the fact that we both believe in Ensemble work playing in repertoire, and you have the background of this exciting plan to perform these two plays with the same cast in Stratford-upon-Avon."

Restaurateur Aziz-Ur Rahman told me he was about to sign a lease on the former Aquavitae at Folly Bridge when we met on May 5 as guests for the Queen's opening of Oxford Castle. On Tuesday, he had an opening party of his own at Pandesia, as his new restaurant is called. (It means 'all food' in Greek and reflects the fact that it is serving delicious Thai and Mediterranean dishes as well as Bangladeshi.) His fast work means the restaurant will be able to cater for some of the hordes heading for the river for the final two days of May Eights. That should put the place firmly on the map at once. One of the guest at the party was my colleague Helen Peacocke. This was her first outing, without sticks, since successful hip replacement surgery at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, whose many excellencies she is now praising to everyone she meets.

Lieut Col Sir John Miller, of Shotover House, who died last week aged 87, enjoyed the sort of lavish obituaries you would expect in view of his long stint (1961-87) as Crown Equerry to the Queen. That in the Daily Telegraph, however, contained an amusing sting in the tail. The obituarist wrote, in the third paragraph from the end of his/her appraisal: "A courtier through and through, Miller was effortlessly polite and wholly devoted to his Sovereign though he was rather less genial to those whose social position was unclear to him."

Ouch! The obit's final paragraph contained just three words, which were equally pregnant with meaning: "He never married."

Azis's new restaurant is not the only thing ready just in time for May Eights. So, too, is the towpath beside the Thames, along which dozens of rowing coaches will be whizzing on their bicycles over the next couple of days. Pedestrians beware! The work has resulted in a most attractive finish to the path. Alas, the path continues only as far as the bridge in front of the (now demolished) University boathouse: beyond it's potholes and puddles, despite the work that went on during an advertised "six weeks" (it was actually nine) of closure. But perhaps there is more still to be done.

I rode along it on my venerable old bicycle, which is now getting towards the end of its long and useful life. (The chap who looks after it tells me he can't get the ball bearings any more.) In anticipation of its demise, I have now bought a brand-new Giant. It even boasts automatic gears which, until my purchase, I didn't even realise existed. Something else to go wrong, no doubt.