wife toook the dobie to the shops wouldn't start when she got back to it. nothing left on in it. (although everything turns itself off automatically.)
got a friendly bloke to help her jump it. got home and it wouldn't start again. I hooked up the jumper leads and all the lights went out and not even a whimper. leads were getting warm but deid as we say here deid as a doour nail! i replaced the battery about 4 months ago. it is due its 72k service. thanks Jim

Don't want to be rude, but do you think you had the leads reversed?

Ok I'll confess I pulled a right one on this one on a citroen xsara the battery is hidden somewher but in the engine bay there is a big thing that has the Pos connections on it - like you would on a battery! with 2 sides to it and so i connected both pos and neg to this.

however on starting it properly car runs for 8 seconds then glow light comes on flashing at 1 sec intervals then after 30 sec stops. car still wont start w/o jump but havent given it a good run yet.