[ESS] remote R

[Kasper Daniel Hansen]

I am in the situation where I frequently will be starting a remote R on a cluster.  In order to start an interactive session (under the sun grid engine), I do
  ssh SERVER
  qrsh
  R-devel

The recommended way in the ESS manual is to use ess-remote, which - assuming I have installed ssh.el - consists of
  M-x ssh
    write SERVER
  in the shh buffer, do qrsh, followed by R-devel
  Mx ess-remote

I want to streamline this, particular I would like to have a command like R-devel-cluster that I can run using M-x.  And I would also like to have a sensible renaming of the buffer.  For now, I would like to explore the possibility of having an Emacs function that does the above.

I am guessing that some people on this list have come at least partway to this goal, and I would like to get some suggestions.  My pseudo-doe would be something like

(ssh "SERVER")
(send shell command to the ssh-buffer)
(ess-remote)

An immediate problem I had when looking at ssh.el is that I could not find a function that does (2) above: essentially runs a given shell command in the ssh buffer.

Two asides
1) Is ssh.el really the current recommended way to open an ssh connection? I am amazed that there is not something bundled with Emacs 23 that does this.
2) I tried another approach: making a shell script that ssh, qrsh and runs R-devel.  That way I can do this in a terminal and I can also do this from within Emacs.  Unfortunately C-c C-c does not really work (it quits R) and I cannot get the help display to work.

Thanks
Kasper