Think I've cracked it - looked at the pins and they seemed fine when comparing it with my usb hdd lead whch does work. Sprayed a squirt of servisol switch contact cleaner in the plug, shoved it in and hey presto it's working like a dream!
Bitsink: might be worth a try to sort yours out, you can get it from maplins and the like. I swear by the stuff for electronics work.
Diego: Agree about the connector, a nice flat ribbon cable with low profile usb connector would do the trick nicely, still for 20 it's not bad (haven,t found the pound sign yet, must read the keyboard map doc I read about earlier in this post
)
Cheers for all your help guys
Ian