So today was the day, and predictably:-
Rust i expected, main beam was a bad connection, fog light was a blown bulb. The emissions was an air leak that I'd been after for a while, and was duly fixed with new vac pipe, which also brought my idle down to below 1k and made it stop popping and farting at idle. The strange one was the master cylinder. It definitely wasn't leaking before it went and I've never had any brake creep. We couldn't get the pedal to creep, and whilst the servo was damp, it didn't look like a leak from anywhere. My mechanic phoned the station, and after a lengthy conversation worked out that one fella doing the MOT had lifted the cap to check the level, spilt it down the servo, his assistant noticed this and failed it as a leak. The assistant had also presumed that if it was leaking, the pedal would be **** without actually trying it. So one annoyed tester later, one relieved me that didn't have to fork out on a new master cylinder, although I will keep an eye on it, and a small choppy choppy weldy weldy time later it was good for retest about 14.00. Then I snapped the handbrake cable parking it outside

one duly procured from the last factors on the list (noone stocks them any more) and it got a pass. Need to find the advisory oil leak, and my exhaust centre section is well past its sell by date, but will sort these in thr next few weeks. Very happy and still surprised, most of the fails were rectified in minutes, and the rust i knew was there. Did get bigger after we had a poke though.
So all good for another year, and i stuck my noisy backbox on when I got home