The news so far looks most promising...Thank you for your prompt and efficient responses. I will try these this evening after work and post the outcome. I should also note that if anyone has anything to add to the proceedings i would be most happy to receive additional information.
UPDATE: Unfortunatly I was not able to get MSN+L to open both accounts at start up...With poligami i received thee falsemsnmsgr.exe. Error. The two fixes i tried did not work for me. Although after reading a bit more in the forrum it seems a combination of dual start up and separate skin is a rather difficult task, reweighing my options i think i would prefer separate skins
over the dual boot.
pollolibredegrasa very useful yet somewhat cryptic post seems just the thing, Further reading provided the below little nugget of understanding i needed to utilize it.
quote:
Originally posted by Eljay
Messenger Plus! Live adds a command line parameter to Messenger which allows you to launch with a particular skin, so you can create two seperate shortcuts, one with the skin and one without.
The locations the shortcuts need to point to are as follows:
(these need to be changed where appropriate if Messenger is installed in a different location)
code:
"C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Messenger\msnmsgr.exe" /PlusSkin="Sweeney Todd"
"C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Messenger\msnmsgr.exe" /PlusSkin=""
Now you just need a way to make sure your mother only launches the bottom one 
Huzah!! All thats left is to change the icon on my copy to something no one will click.
Thanks again to all who contributed herein.
