Right, I've got this "sort of" working. I thought people would like to add their comments though, so I've rolled it out as is.
Known problems:
smilies do not work. :'( (they can be added afterwards)
URL shows up in a rather weird way. if you edit your post and submit again, it will resolve this
weird thread names. this is used to allow the system to update itself. Once you re-visit the article that you commented on (or anyone else does), it will automatically change the name for you.
I'm still working on this, amongst other things, so will hopefully have a better solution in place soon
