Well just went home, and first thing I noticed was the blinking light had turned to a solid light. I switched off the set top box, and turned back on again. Rebooted PC, and I was back online without even calling NTL.
plonking (hi) does have a point - this has been going on for sometime now. Surely when a fault has been identified which ntl have (5 days ago) they should be able to restore the service rapidly (within 24 hours). Something clearly not right here