"the best thing to do especially after driving the car with a lot of electrical equipment on ie; lights, heater, is to leave the car running for about 5 mins with no electrical items switched on to re-charge your battery before you switch the car off, this will help the elongate the life of your battery"
Not so, Once the car has started ALL power is supplied by the alternator, which will also recharge what was taken to start. There should be no conditions at all upon which the battery will need to supply power once the engine is running. To prove this point, the alternator voltage when running should be around 14v. This is above the rest voltage of the battery (fully charged about 12.8-13.1 after sitting for 24 hours) Since this would be the case if the alternator is working, its not possible for the battery to supply any current.
What would have happened in the case of Nimhbk is that the battery would have been a few years old and the reserve capacity would have decreased. It would have had enough power to start the car, (which can be surprisingly little in some cases) but little reserve capacity to run the lights for any length of time on its own. A new battery would have been fine.
Ed