I'd dish you out a Gmail account [as your definately in need if your using NTL's

] but Google have really slowed down the supply of Gmail invites
Anyway, in short, find an alternative. You could setup a dial up 0845 account and just dial into it once a while to get access to a POP3 email service account, without having to pay for it.
Just make sure you dial in once a month or something, to keep it active. And give it a quick google to make sure they dont suffer the same fate as NTL do regularly