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The needle on the rev counter was just bouncing around all over the place and the car was juddering. I took him home and switched the engine off, tried to restart him but now he won't start at all. Could it be a misfire or is it something terminal and expensive? 
, dissy cap, rotor arm, there is a thread in knowledge base for that. (ignition timing may have slipped?! or more probable the Cam belt slipped possibly? That would be new cambelt and tensioner and maybe bearings.£350, if you've had it done recently they should of checked tensioner to see if it was ok. Better just putting a new one on for the £60 and piece of mind. 
I had a quick look at the leads but I didn't have time to look properly. shane1978 wrote:I'd check all normal things such as HT leads
Otherwise timing may be out.
- timing belt and cambelt are the same thing AFAIK.shane1978 wrote:Say average cost for cambelt change is around
£140-160, inc. belt 
To suddenly go like that I'd say its not an ignition component suddenly gone west but I could be wrong. I'd say its more likely to be a hose come lose or something like that. Check they're all ok and that your jubilee clips are all tight. Check leads etc are all in place too, and you have nothing flapping about that could have worked lose!! 
The car wouldn't start but it was just clicking so I took the keys out the ignition, disconnected the jump leads but the starter wouldn't stop! I had to disconnect the battery to stop it.(who changed the starter motor only a few months ago) to get it sorted. Could this problem have caused a drop in revs i.e starter motor draining the alternator?..dont know if that could be cauing the inital juddering 
should i be worried about this? Its a heavy duty wire (sometimes braided) that earths the engine to the bodywork or the bodywork to the battery. Things like the starter motor and some of the sensors only have live wires running to them and pick up their earth through their casing being bolted to the engine which in turn is earthed to the body via the earth strap/s. If yours is on with the engine running then there is a fault somewhere and you need to pull the fault codes. Its easy enough to do and but the pins that need to be bridged in the diagnostic ports escape me. Should be in the knowledge database.(hopefully)