A longue journey to Romania

being provocative, Jackie McGlone discovers

ONE of Ned Sherrin's favourite anecdotes is Mrs Patrick Campbell's

description of marriage as ''giving up the hurly-burly of the

chaise-longue for the deep peace of the double bed''. As a lifelong

bachelor, however, he maintains the only memorable nocturnal experience

he has had of late was when he was burgled last winter and slept right

through it.

His own chaise-longue in his Chelsea flat, which is filled with

theatrical memorabilia proving that he has met everybody he needs to

meet, is a faded pink and so fatigued-looking that it would appear to

have seen some service over the years.

At 63, Sherrin insists that his libido left long before George Melly's

and that if it is awakened, he simply sends out for a Chinese take-away.

It is difficult to imagine how the urbane and sophisticated Sherrin

would find time for the hurly-burly of the chaise-longue anyway, for he

seems to have made his career out of having careers.

Not only does he present Radio 4's Loose Ends with a wit that can be

as tart as a hollowed lemon, he is also a film producer, actor,

director, writer, and raconteur. He denies he is a workaholic. ''I'm an

amusementaholic,'' he says, with his trademark fastidiousness of tone

and gesture. ''I'm not so much a great wit myself as the recorder of wit

in others.''

This is the first year in many that he won't be revealing his own

erudite talent to amuse in Edinburgh, although he'll be there in spirit.

He will be at his desk, slaving over the manuscript of the 110,000-word

novel he is writing in longhand. It is a dynastic theatrical story

called Scratch an Actor, which comes from Dorothy Parker's quote:

''Scratch an actor and you'll find an actress''.

The book, he promises, with a wicked gleam in his eye, will contain

all the unprintable anecdotes and scurrilous theatrical gossip he

couldn't put into his anthologies, such as the hilarious Ned Sherrin in

His Anecdotage. There are also the finishing touches to be put to the

Oxford University Press's Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, which he is

editing and which he promises will be less fuddy-duddy than in previous

years.

Time has somehow been made in this frantically busy schedule to direct

the Romanian actress Magdalena Buznea in her one-woman show for the

fringe, Romania: A Journey in My Mind. Buznea fled Ceausescu's dreadful

totalitarian regime in the sixties when her defiantly independent manner

and compulsive outspokenness about the injustices taking place in her

country made her a non-person.

''She had been the Romanian equivalent of, say, Dorothy Tutin or Judi

Dench,'' says Sherrin. ''Having played St Joan and a whole host of

heroines in the classic repertoire, everything from Antigone to the

Ibsens, she has been awfully courageous, trying to establish herself in

a foreign language. I am a huge fan, she is wonderful!

''To survive she has done all sorts of terrible jobs, such as cleaning

up incontinent old ladies and scrubbing floors, to bring up her son who

has just passed his bar exams and is now doing his pupillage as a

barrister.''

Now in her fifties, Buznea wrote to Sherrin in the early 1970s --

''she is not the sort of person to sit around, she does tend to write to

people'' -- and they have been firm friends ever since.

''I must say she has had the most dreadful time and really since

leaving Romania she has had no peace,'' he says. ''Yet when she sings

bits of Piaf or Brel or a Romanian folk song with the most tremendous

conviction you see what a powerful actress she is because the language

stops inhibiting her.

''When she performs a magical little bit of Anouilh's St Joan, this

incredible spirit shines through and we glimpse the real tragedy of her

life and the true quality of her talent.''

It saddens Sherrin that he will not be able to see Buznea perform on

the Edinburgh fringe, but he says he must finish his novel before

Christmas as he can't afford to pay back the advance he received for it.

For a man who never stops working, he doesn't live in the lap of

luxury and everything in his flat, from the threadbare brown carpet to

the chipped and much-Araldited tea-service from which he graciously

serves tea, seems to have seen better days.

The son of a Somerset farmer, he was educated at Oxford and called to

the bar in 1955. A decade later he devised, produced and directed the

satirical show That Was the Week That Was which cast a mordant eye over

the sixties. With the late Caryl Brahms, he produced songs, three

novels, two collections of short stories and various screen, radio and

stage plays. He has also written an autobiography, been the toast of

Broadway in Side By Side By Sondheim, and directed Peter O'Toole in

Keith Waterhouse's Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell.

He prefers working with a collaborator -- ''Oh God,'' he sighs,

''trying to dredge it all up by oneself! The only thing that keeps me

going is I'm quite interested to find out what's going to happen to all

these characters.''

For his next theatrical trick he will direct Stephanie Cole in a new

play, A Passionate Woman, by Kay Mellor. Being a virtuoso of linguistic

nuance, he announces: ''She is a Leodensian playwright and it is very

much a Leeds subject and is about a woman having a midlife crisis. We

have yet to cast it, so I have to find Stephanie a son, a dream lover,

and an unrewarding husband.''

In the spring he will direct Waterhouse's new play, Bing Bong. ''It is

about two sit-com writers whose career is on the way down; it's a

powerful piece -- very, very funny, but it also gets very dark.''

None of this is viewed as work. ''It's the old thing. If I was back on

the farm, I'd think of that as work and going to the theatre in Yeovil

or Bristol would be a wonderful hobby, whereas this is all a hobby,'' he

says.

And, anyway, he adds, it's important to keep working while you can.

''Haven't you noticed all these thrusting young male directors who are

taking over the British theatre, as well as all these thrusting women

directors of all ages? I fear there's no place for old farts any more.''

* ROMANIA -- A Journey In My Mind, actress Magdalena Buznea's

one-woman show, is in The Attic at the Pleasance from August 10 to

September 3.