But while I have your collective attention, there's another little issue arisen.  I want the Pi to launch directly into mplayer looping the video file fullscreen.  In LXTerminal it runs as I want it to if I enter

mplayer -fs LizardPorn.mp4 -loop 0

I thought all I had to do to run it at boot was to add it at the end of /etc/rc.local , but that doesn't work. Any ideas why not, and how to fix it?

Gotta link to LizardPorn.mp4 ?

I think it's because rc.local does things in the background. Whereas when you're logged in and doing it manually you're very much in the foreground.

Try this :
DISPLAY=":0" mplayer -fs LizardPorn.mp4 -loop 0

Though display number might be wrong because you're not on the default, fiddle with that yj

Or try some sort of autologin (which I think you did with the lonely project)

Thanks Ant.  I also wondered whether the command would fare better in the bashrc script?  I don't know what the difference is between the two.

Does mplayer play music files? Might be the solution for my little project... (I'll do some ing laterf

Bastard phone. :((

Yes, it does.

Grand - I didn't have time to do much googling about it last night, but it looks like it supports a touchscreen interface - do you know if it supports the small screens out of the box with an appropriate small screen GUI?

Mine was a generic 3.2 incher, John, but it worked fine with Waveform's Raspbian image here, or you could just install the driver on the same page.

I've been experimenting with a version of Jessie lite (the newer version of Raspbian custom packaged from adafruit with their drivers built in), which has been working well with the screen. I just need a small screen GUI for an MP3 player to go with it.

I've been checking out a few more guides, searching less specific criteria and found this guide where the dude has XBMC running on a (albeit larger) touchscreen in his car. I've not read through the whole thing properly yet, but I'll hopefully be able to cobble something together from his guide tonight. 

The image I linked to does a good job of forcing the GUI to 320x240.  It would be funkier still if I could force windows to a similar size.