Thank you Ken & Syahir. A friend (who created and customised the child theme in the first place) well versed in WP came to the rescue.
“Upgrade to WP 3.4 made a mess of the site” was her line, might get here to be more specific with it to maybe report a bug and/or offer more help/info to others.
Lesson learned, thank you for your help and suggestions all, appreciated.
