Thank you for your reply Swanson.
There are many feeds that are generated in this fashion and other readers have no difficulties parsing them whether it be locally (ie: MS Outlook) or server based (Google Reader).
I appreciate your suggestion but it is unlikely that an AV or firewall attributed to the issue. And yes, because WordPress has RSS as a fully & properly implemented function, I am fairly certain that it is user error (me) and not WordPress.
Any help would be greatly apprciated.
Philip