Thanks for your response
Yes to all your questions, in fact I tried more combinations with the original script then a cocktail barman and have come to the conclusion that my two hosting accounts don't support PHP.
I tried the advised test scripts
<?php
phpinfo();
?>
Ask me to download the file
#!/usr/local/bin/php
<HTML>
<!-- phpinfor.php -->
<BODY>
<?php
phpinfo();
?>
</BODY>
</HTML>
Displayed only "#!/usr/local/bin/php"
What's confusing me is that I got the same errors on a W2K and a Unix(standard) servers...
Could someone be so kind as to upload the two test scripts above and send me the link so I can see what should be displayed and then argue this out with my hosting companies.

Thanks again
Karl