I'D never set foot inside a penthouse apartment - especially one that cost the best part of half a million - until I went along to meet the cast of a new play called Perfect Days.

The main character in this romantic comedy is Babs Marshall, an attractive, wealthy, celebrity hairdresser who lives in a luxury flat in Southampton - hence the visit to the up-market pad at Imperial Apartments to enable the actors to get "in character."

The penthouse, which I mistakenly referred to as a loft (you can't take me anywhere) was a cream dream - everything came in a delicate shade of ivory, from the carpets and the walls to the bed linen and the furniture.

I kept nervously checking the soles of my shoes to make sure I hadn't traipsed in something I shouldn't and smeared it over the pristine floors.

Thoughts of the damage my son and his grubby-fingered pals had inflicted on my poor home constantly sprang to mind as I lounged on the sumptuous sofas and wallowed in the luxury. It was definitely not the kind of place you could allow a child to run around in.

So, I didn't really envy the potential challenge faced by the chic Babs - newly-divorced, nearly 40 - and desperate to have a baby.

Her quest is played out against a background of intertwined relationships which border on the incestuous.

Susannah Elliott-Knight, who plays Babs, describes her as "ebullient and high-energy - like Ruby Wax, but very English".

"She has made the controversial decision to have a baby alone, not by default but through choice," says Susannah.

Along the way we meet her mother, her younger lover, her ex-husband, her gay business partner and his lover and her best friend Alice, played by Kate Brown, a wife, mother and home-maker - Babs' opposite in terms of life experience and choices.

"Without giving away too much of the plot it's fair to say that turkey basters play a part," says Sue Harris, the play's publicist.

n Perfect Days is at The Haymarket Theatre, Basingstoke, from October 20 to Wednesday November 11. Tickets, which cost from £10, are available from the box office on 01256 465566.

NADINE BATEMAN