Thanx peeps, I just checked their setting on their laptop - and all seem right for the ntl account. They still use the ntl, just their work adsl for the lappy as the kiddies are on the ntl msn!!
They couldn't get any mails from their friends and they had a could not connect when they tried. I think ntl might have had a quirk with e-mail at the same time. I sent an e-mail from my PC and so far no returned errors.
Cheers again