Another possibility that has been put forward today is the fact that the brake booster must be leaking as there is a hissing from the bellow by the pedal, when you move the bellow around the hissing stops, but apparantly there shouldn't be any sound inside the car as that is just a dust cover. So this could be leaking air into the manifold after the maf meter hence not throwing up a code, and the excess air is causing it to add extra fuel hence the low mpg and also the excess fuel in the system then causing the flare up between gears etc. Does this sound feasible, the only thing now making me doubt this is that I pulled the brake pipe off the manifold and sealed it off and tested but it still over revved. I only tested it once or twice in a lane as obviously I had no brakes as such. The brakes are fine in normal use so perhaps this is too small a leak to be affecting anything? Cheers