i managed to stop the errors showing on the validation report. It was the javascript causing the grief. The closing object tag wanted to be written as
<\/OBJECT> instead of just </OBJECT>
see this page for more info: http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/valida...ms.html#script

however, I havent tackled the fact that if you remove the html out of the javascript and just display the flash with no detection, there are several validation errors. But as long as it works, I'm not going to waste any more time...