Since I posted this thread I have tried RSPerl, but a) it only works on UNIX systems and b) having installed it and attempted to run it on a UNIX system, I have met with nothing but problems trying to do any useful statistics with it.
There have been two previous posts on the relevant mailing list asking how to carry out a linear regression using the R from Perl facility of RSPerl, and no useful information has been forthcoming.

Having tried myself and drawn a blank I have reluctantly gone back to Statistics::R.