thanks dave - when you say isolate, do you mean "turn the circuit off" or do you mean "find the other end of the cable and disconnect it"?Ooops, that potentially made the repair a whole lot more difficult!
Forget the multimeter, isolate the cable and IR test it.
re. sniping the pot off, i'm trying to lower the socket in question so i needed to shorten the cable (fed from below).