Fairly good reviews for his "subversive comedy," Sheep on the Runway, may have launched a playwright's career for Columnist Art Buchwald (see THE THEATER). Meanwhile, cocktail conversation in New York and Washington is centered on Sheep's catalyst, Joseph Mayflower, played by Martin Gabel. Could Mayflower, a superhawk newsman who drinks only bottled water and claims Is Peace Inevitable? among his writing credits, possibly be a parody of Pundit Joseph Alsop? Buchwald denies it unconvincingly, but Alsop seems to think so. "If Joe's still angry after the run," suggests the humorist, "we'll meet some foggy dawn on the Ellipse behind the White House. Captured enemy documents at 50 paces."

Proceeds from his memoirs, Ein Leben (A Life), have helped Heartbreaker and Transplanter Christiaan Barnard to entertain his beautiful young fiancee in jet-set elegance. But the woman scorned, ex-Wife Louwtjie Barnard, 47, says those memoirs occasionally lapse into pure --or impure--invention. For instance, Barnard's recollection that he had left his wife's bed on their wedding night and watched a televised boxing match instead. Louwtjie told reporters in Munich that the surgeon "never was a gentleman," adding, "but I always was a lady." She had a final warning for her ex: "You can't become a playboy and a scientist at the same time. One has to give."

A military string ensemble pumped out the dansant tunes in the ballroom at Buckingham Palace as Master Farceur Noel Coward, 70, was dubbed a knight of the realm. In a simple, almost offhand ceremony, the entertainer knelt on a small stool and took a sword tap on each shoulder ("very lightly, thank goodness," he said later) from Queen Elizabeth II, who wore street clothes. "The Queen was absolutely charming," Coward told newsmen. "She always is. I've known her since she was a little girl." Then Sir Noel strolled off with a lady on each arm, wearing a rakishly tilted top hat and his new knighthood very lightly, thank goodness.

A romantic oval portrait that makes Tricia and Julie Nixon look like teenage heroines of a Victorian novel won approval from their White House parents. "It's so sweet," said Pat. The artist, Mississippian Marshall Bouldin, explained that he found the girls' dominant aura one of "wholesomeness and cleanliness" and that he had tried to express this in the painting. To which President Nixon replied, grinning: "They're wholesome and clean-cut, but they're oval, not square."

"How did a nice girl like you get into this business?" reads the caption under one of the eight photos that make up Barbara Benton's "uncoverage" in the March issue of Playboy. It could be the company she keeps. Barbi, a beguiling brunette, is the constant companion and consort-designate of Maximum Playboy Hugh Hefner ("The first time I've ever been in love"). When Playboy's publisher first met his Barbi doll, she was a student at U.C.L.A. and had "no interest whatsoever in any kind of a nude feature. When she became interested in a film career, she changed her mind." Obviously, it pays to choose your fiances.

"Once they got their knickers off, I said 'Fine, now do something clever.' But they didn't." That was Sir Robert Helpmann's critique of Oh! Calcutta! Arriving for an engagement in his native Australia, the dancing knight of London's Royal Ballet was eager to treat a group of Down Under newsmen to his impressions of New York's latest word in nude theater. "Dirty, smutty and boring," judged Helpmann, 60. Did he think the nude mood could ever spread to ballet? "Oh, no, no, no!" he protested, recoiling in mock horror. "I mean there are certain parts of the male and female anatomy which don't stop swinging when the music does. Think how disconcerting for the orchestra. They'd have to add an extra 'plonk.' "

A scant 48 hours with the Nixons in Washington were enough to open the sluices of homesickness for Poetaster Mary Wilson, 53, who was once (some say in jest) nominated for the chair of poetry at Oxford. Shortly after returning to England with her husband, the Prime Minister's wife made a guest appearance on BBC radio's Open House hour and misted some British eyes by reciting a bit of original verse entitled I Am Returning Home. To wit:

. . . They are cleaning Lord Nelson

Against the grey sky

He stares with both eyes

As the buses grind by.

The blackbird and thrush

A re beginning to sing

And in London, in England

It soon will be spring.

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