sorry for delay - been waiting for CS6 to arrive as I want to use the other functions...
I found the issue: I changed the following
if (($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") && (isset($_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"]) && strpos(urldecode($_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"]), urldecode($_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"].$_SERVER["PHP_SELF"])) > 0) && isset($_POST)) { //WA Universal Email
TO:
if (isset($_POST["subby"]) || isset($_POST["subby_x"])) { //WA Universal Email
and also found I had set the email to use my ISP SMTP gateway, changed this to 'mail' and now all working - thanks again
next step to restore the email page to read from the form as this didn't auto update and recreate the validation
the validation new functions / features for the form looks great :)