Just to complete the tale, I tried a new lead on no.1 but still got no spark despite no. 4 seeming to be ok (perhaps my tester was a bit misleading but the flash looked as good here as on the others that were working), so concluded the fault must be with the dis pack. Decided to remove the unit the hard way so whipped out the wiper motor and undid the four bolts - it was fiddly, but I have a pretty useful 1/4' drive socket set with various extensions so was able to get it out fairly easily. Couldn't see any sign of a fault or shorting on the outside of the unit, in fact it appeared to be in such good condition I began to doubt my diagnosis so I connected the leads up again with the unit lose on top of the plenum and tried the car again with new and old HT leads. Same result, it still seemed to be firing on 5 cylinders.
Bought a new Bosch unit from autovaux on eBay for £70, tried it on top of the engine again and started the car. Success!, running on six again and sounding nice and smooth. Fitted the unit back on its shelf, which was more of a pain than getting it out, started the car again and all was still fine. Tried the car on a short run, then took it away for the weekend and 450 miles later I'm still happy.
Thanks for all of your replies they were a big help, this forum is great.