OK, I'm picking up on this. I set up my outlook express to have a look at the same provider and group and I found the header Xref: pubnews.domain.net uk.rec.my.newsgroup:22623 for the message prior to what I want to start with. So all I need to do is insert that number in my Newsgroups Maintenance Last Message Number.
This may be redundant for a lot of you, but I'l bet there are plenty of newbies too.
Apparently the read only service I was using either took a break, dumped my newsgroup or dumped me. So on to the next one from
www.newzbot.com or go with astraweb as recommended.