very good point Aloys ... Blender issues are really a seperate item ... the problem is, it's almost impossible to find an answer to something like this over at the Blender website (I tried for a long time before posting again here) ... so... maybe we could have a seperate "Blender Troubleshooting" section ... though of course that's more work for someone else *cough* ...
oh, and Robert, deleting the UV block
does solve the "problem" ...but at a price ... you lose your UV mapping (which could have been a lot of work!, as in my case) ... so
reloading the texture into the "empty" UV window (it appears "empty" when you have the object & (missing) texture selected) solves the "pink" issue
without having to delete the UV block ... thus preserving your UV mapping ...

when it comes to Age creation ... "DOH" seems to be my middle name...