Commedia dell'arte

When Stephen Stratford broke from his luxury lifestyle to forward me Mick Hartley's complaint about the Saatchi Gallery I misinterpreted his sarcasm as a recommendation and attended the Newspeak exhibition myself. Entry to the Saatchi Collection is free, and if you get off the tube at Victoria you can enjoy a nice stroll through Knightsbridge past empty, harshly-lit designer outlets that resemble Moscow shops during a 1980s shortage.

My favourites in the exhibition were Robert Fry and Maaike Schoorel and Jonathan Wateridge because I'm an old-fashioned sucker for sticky stuff pushed around on canvas, although I accept that what appears to be aesthetics is just as likely to be conceptual. Artists nowadays swap styles in the way that Japanese teenagers change clothes - rockabillies one day, Goths the next - and I envy them for it. Nor did I need to be warned to avoid the gallery essays, the reading of which inevitably becomes a frustrating game of Spot The Verb.

But if you want a way in my cheater's tip is to head straight to the fifth floor and look at the artists' photographs for some good old-fashioned stereotyping. Pictures about pictures...