Recently, I have been given a few flash jobs to finish with a quick turnaround. Spent an hour trying to fix something yesterday, time which I didn't have to waste. So if it helps anyone in the future, if you have a movie clip that has a text field embedded in it and you duplicate this movie clip then rotate the clip, the text does not display.
You need to select the character button in the property inspector for the text field and embed the characters that you intend to use.
Sorry if this is a lesson in the obvious, it had me stumped.