A FAMOUS 20th century artist and a formidable TV chef are being brought back to life by real-life partners Fine Time Fontayne and Sandra Hunt. Their one-man shows are both playing on consecutive nights in York Theatre Royal's Studio, with both being performed next Saturday.

Trimming Pablo recalls Picasso visiting Yorkshire for a peace conference in 1950, while Fanny Cradock - The Lives And Loves Of A Kitchen Devil tells of the life and times of the first celebrity TV cook.

Fontayne, who starred in the Theatre Royal's sell-out revival of Brassed Off last year, has been performing Trimming Pablo off-and-on for the past two years. He has several other solo shows to his credit.

"If you have a six-month gap between shows, you have to learn it all over again. I put the script on a music stand and march up and down chanting it. Sometimes I get bored and learn it backwards," he says.

"I've been an actor for 25 or 26 years and did my first one-man show six years ago. I'd never had to retain any words apart from during a production for three-and-a-half weeks. Then I'd forget them.

"As a child I never had a party piece, now I have eight hours of one-man shows in my head."

As an art student in Barnsley in the 1960s, Fontayne learned about and admired Picasso. The famous Communist Party member came to Sheffield to attend the Second World Peace Congress at the City Hall. Writer Dave Sheasby's cubist comedy follows events on that day, including Picasso going to get a haircut (in a barber's shop that's now a caf) with music played by Jacqueline Thomas from The Brodsky Quartet.

"Dave is a historian as well as a writer. He was ten when Picasso came to Sheffield and was fascinated that he missed him. It's always drawn him to find out what happened, and he found loads and loads of stories," says Fontayne.

"There's a photograph of Picasso arriving at the railway station wearing a beret and holding a bouquet of chrysanthemums. Dave has spoken to the people who cut his hair. Whether he stayed in a manse with the bishop or with a prostitute, nobody knows but MI5 did plant a spy under the stage and he did a drawing of a peace dove which was auctioned for £22."

What he likes about performing a one-man show is that "it's very empowering as an actor". He explains: "It teaches you a lot about audiences and the dynamic of theatre. You feel if people are getting bored, if you're losing them. It's altered the way I feel about performing."

Fontayne directs real-life partner Sandra Hunt as Fanny Cradock in her one-woman show. At one time he was going to write the show, although it was eventually written by North-East-based Julia Darling. The play has also had a life as a three-hander and a different title, Doughnuts Like Fanny's - taken from husband Johnny's comment that "great cooking is making doughnuts like Fanny's".

Hunt says that the more she read about Fanny, the more she realised that she was a fascinating topic for a play. "Julia took the show from Fanny's own books and works, developing themes from that. It goes through her life story, from childhood to death," she says. "She was this woman TV chef who was very glamorous and very theatrical. There was much more to her than just being a TV cook. She wrote novels and children's books under pseudonyms." Hunt is aiming for a physical and vocal likeness of Cradock, but only up to a point, as she doesn't want to turn her performance into just an impersonation.

"I admire her, although there's a lot I don't like, such as her half-truths and driving ambition," she says. "She attracted critical comments but it was Johnny who abandoned his wife and children to go off with her. That's never mentioned, that he did anything wrong. So there's that love story between Fanny and Johnny."

One thing she doesn't do is cook during the production. "If you're in a touring show that plays one night here, one night there, it's too difficult to do something like cooking," she says. "Besides, the play is about who's doing it rather than what she's doing."

The theatrical collaboration of Fontayne and Hunt is unlikely to stop with these one-man plays. He says that they have "a fantastic idea for a two-hander". That one won't be about real people but a cartoonist and his model wife.

l Trimming Picasso is on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and Fanny Cradock - The Lives And Loves Of A Kitchen Devil is on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday in The Studio at York Theatre Royal, tickets (01904) 623568.