*Excellent*! A very simple recipe, which I followed successfully to get recording of streams from BBC iplayer working on both my desktop (Ubuntu Lucid, with an Asus Xonar sound card) and my big laptop (also Ubuntu Lucid, with on-board Intel sound). Now to have a play with my netbook (Asus Aspire One, currently running Ubuntu Karmic, 'cos when I upgraded to Lucid the wireless networking stopped...).
Thanks again
Ian