I love Deke.
What the other tutorial hadnt said, maybe because it was a later version, but the gradient tool had to be selected BEFORE i chose the colours. Seems obvious now but I was going mental trying to do it before. So Deke said to select the gradient tool, and then drag the colour swatches you wanted onto the little picture of it in the right hand corner of the screen. Marvellous. 
Took me a while to get to grips with the rotating malarky, but soon had it- just gotta get the right point to swizzle it.
And then I changed my 'linear' gradient to be 'radial' and VOILA! C'est magnificent.
