Flashes: March 5, 1993

STEAM ROLE: Phil Collins will play the owner of a gay bathhouse in the fall HBO movie And the Band Played On, starring Matthew Modine and based on the Randy Shilts best-seller. ''His agent had a copy of the script, and he was eager to play any part at all,'' says an HBO spokesman. It turns out Collins knows his way around a bathhouse: ''When I'm on the road, I spend a lot of time in them for my voice,'' he says. ''Sometimes it's in a very sleazy gym, sometimes in an old-fashioned bathhouse just like in the Roman days. There's cruising going on in some, but I just go there and have my steam, and half an hour later I leave.''