Ah, thanks. (First time I've seen Debian sarge be noticeably out of date, in fact. When I was running woody I wouldn't have hesitated to look in unstable before doing anything else at all!)

The menu I want isn't actually quite composed of nothing but SSH entries – a notable exception is the slightly more complex script that connects to Monochrome. I'd adapt the applet you link to there, only I can hardly understand a word of it. (Though that may be just because I speak neither GNOME nor Ruby :-)