I'm gonna need to buy some basic lighting equipment and I was wondering if anyone can advise me. What am I looking at spending, are there any basic "starter packages" available, that sort of thing. Thanks in advance.

Are you talking about strobes for still photography or continuous lighting for video?

I have a couple of each from a company called JTL. Very inexpensive, and it shows in the quality, but better than the pure dreck I bought on Ebay.

be VERY careful with halogen lamps in a wam situation. The bulbs are made of quartz and will explode in a shower of hot shards if there is so much as a fingerprint on them.

I highly recommend using a softbox over the exposed lamp head. First, it provides a very even and clean light source. Scond, the large illuminated surface area shows up as nice shiny reflections on a pair of sticky slimy boobs. Third, the softbox protects the bulb from being splattered with pie, and if the bulb does shatter, the softbox will protect the people in front of it from the shards of molten quartz.

I'm not sure if there would be a better source in the UK, but I've purchased lights from Steve Kaeser ( http://www.skaeser.com/ ) and they're decent quality. They sell very reasonably priced kits, but they're not as high quality as the pro kits you might pay 3 times as much for. They are an good bargain. I've got some 650W halogens that I purchased 300W bulbs for, so I could switch out the bulb and tone them down when 650W was too much. Of course, you can also just point them into an umbrella to soften them up and take away some of their punch. skaeser.com also sells fluorescent kits that would use less energy and generate less heat. I went with halogens only to match my existing kit.

Sorry, I should have said - lighting for video. Thanks for the feedback, it's really helpful.

My first two shoots have used a two-part halogen light stand from the home improvement store. Hardly perfect, but plenty of light for the camera, and good for the budget!

Ikea baby. Ikea.

Which ones?
I've found a source for pretty cheap 250W florescent fixtures and bulbs, and have been looking at building myself some lights but if Ikea is a decent alternative I could just do that...

Ones with paper around them

I use eBay light stands, booms, & Edison sockets, camera store umbrellas, and giant Elco 95 or 105 watt coiled florescents (equivalent to 400-500 watts incandescent). they're about 16 inches long so they spill out of the umbrellas a little, but generally do a great job. They're about 200 degrees cooler than halogens or the tungsten PAR cans I used to use and use a lot less power, but florescents do not output the full spectrum evenly so white balance is a little touchy with some cameras. I do manual balance with a white-card/gray card when shooting with my Sony VX cams.

The heat thing is important since I shoot in low-ceiling locations, but if I ever start using a real studio with a high ceiling, I might go back to tungsten again for the richer reds. I actually prefer softboxes to umbrellas too, but these florescent bulbs are too big for the ones I have.

We use a pair of 500W halogen work lamps from a DIY store, supplemented by 50W halogens from the same supplier bolted to the ceiling. Because they're work lamps they come with tough cases and toughened glass screens, so no worries about the bulbs exploding. The result is very white and very bright in our dungeon, and our cameras like the light temperature.

Given we shoot in a cold climate, the 1400W of heat our lights add to the output of the 2kW dungeon heaters is a welcome bonus!

As long as all of your lights are of the same type, you can white balance for them and get accurate colors. The whiter the light, the less it will favor one color or another, but there isn't much difference unless you're using some strange light like a street light (sodium?).

Mixing lights is a no-no, unless you're doing it for creative reasons. Using incandescent bulbs while streaming daylight through an open window will result in a strange mix of blue and red since daylight is much bluer (colder) than incandescent lights.

I still prefer inexpensive studio lights to the improvised lights, because I find studio light stands easier to work with and I can easily mount umbrellas, barndoors, snoots, cookies, and filters on them. The lights themselves aren't that expensive, although the accessories add up fast.

If you're just trying to flood the scene with light, then the work lights probably function identically. You definitely don't need to spend a ton of money just to get a lot of light, but be sure you color match your light sources. If you choose halogen, then go halogen all the way; ditto for fluorescent, incandescent or any other type of lighting. Watch out for LEDs, because they vary in temperature depending on the manufacturer and their exact composition. You should be able to find out their temperature before you buy them. They're pretty expensive for the amount of light they give off, and they require a lot of diffusion. Someday, they will probably be the light of choice, but for now, I'd avoid them unless you've got a big budget and you want to save energy.