Hey thanks for all the responses guys

luckily the bulb issue was just the bulb ( thought it was gonna be a knightmare tracing elec prob ) bulb looked fine but must have blown as a new one works fine.
Topped up the brake fluid as much as possible and fingers crossed thats the brake light on the dash sorted - hasn't come on again once......yet
Put a new ariel in at the weekend, got the £20 universal job from maplins, had to files the braket a bit to make it fit but other than that all went in ok...... untill we came to test it!
Reception was worse than the coat hanger wedged in the previous one?? we came to the conclusion in the end the coax wiring polarity was the wrong way round for the new ariel ?????? weird but after splicing the lead and connecting the outta coax wire to the inner wire and visa versa through a junction box the reception was miles better?? very strange.... still not as good as before though. after a bit more fiddling about the reception was even better if you just touched the end of the lead from the head unit on the base of the ariel pole?? so now what should have been a really neat job is a bit of a bodge to say the least with the end of the lead taped to the base of the pole!
The head unit is a factory standard clarion unit?? anyone else had similar probs connecting univeral ariels??
not sure if my blurb really makes sense but when i said polarity of the coax wire i mean the lead has 2 conncetions yer, inner hard core and outta webbed thin wire. thats what we spliced and put into a junction box to connect the oppersite way around going from the lead from the head unit to the lead already on the new ariel
LOL - i cant explain things like this on paper very well - your probably reading this thinking ...WFT!!