Thanks, M-B. I have no doubt that SSD is the way to go but considering that it's not being frequently booted, the 70 seconds that I'm down to for no cost (okay a quid for the cable but even that was not really connected to tuning), is acceptable.
For the record; I usually cold boot, not from any of the suspend states, because the TV tuner gets its knickers in a twist if I try. If I don't need the TV tuner, boot from standby is less than 10 seconds.