Well here's a strange thing. Yesterday it went in to get timing belt, pulleys, water pump replaced, Garage had it for 2 days as it took a while to do.

This morning, I set off, put lights on and lo and behold it lights up... How odd! I didn't see anything on the garage job sheet saying they fixed it, or put new bulbs in.

I also think it's the fancy indiglo glow, so makes me wonder now, do those bulb holders take bulbs or is this fancy glow done using equivalent of EL-wire or similar, and so it's either faulty and will stop working again, or if a connector was loose and the work has 'sorted' it?

I'm gonna take the dash apart again and take a look, see if it's magically got a bunch of bulbs inserted now!

How odd!

 

I'm good at replying to myself, but for future people finding this.
I took the speedo console apart again to check, and nope, still no bulbs in there!
So conclusion is that the fancy glowing green console isn't done by the bulbs, it's done by something like El wire or similar, so it's correct not to have bulbs in the sockets on this model.

Why mine wasn't working and now works, I'm still unsure, so still some faulty wire or something somewhere!

 

Thanks for the update Andy lad. We all learn - and at times teach others and I and the forum have learned from you today. I never knew that they were 'bulbless' electroluminescent wire before.