banana, try this which has worked for me uploading pictures to my website. I use IE, but there should be a similar option in other browsers. Tools>Internet Options>Connections>Lan Settings. Tick the proxy server box, and enter the address as 62.252.32.5 and Port as 8080. My "Advanced" tab has "use the same proxy server for all protocols" ticked. That cured my problems with uploading pictures, but various sources recommend only using those settings when you need to. I have found that if you leave those settings in place, some sites will not work (watching trailers on Apple.com for instance) so it IS best to only alter the settings when necessary. I haven't experimented with whether this helps with emails. Oh, once you have input the settings, when you "untick" the settings seem to be stored, so next time you need to alter them, you can just tick the box. Hope this works for you, if it doesn't try signing up here:
http://www.nthellworld.com/forum/
where there are lots of people who really know they're stuff about NTL problems. Do a search first, as they sometimes get a bit snotty about repeated questions!