I kind of figured something wasnt right. It was just running very rough.
After being told some backfiring is normal, even the odd cough stall (by the good people here). I began to notice other things too. It was really struggling to pull at around 10mph in second. Clearly something was not right considering the torque of a VTR. It reminded me of riding the CBF500, which would make sense since if its only running on one cylinder, its about the same torque!
So I took it down for a once over by a local dealer. Two mechanics had a listen to it, seperately and told me that its only firing on one cylinder up to around 4,000rpm. So that probably explains it. I had noticed quite a surge in power from about 4k, but put this down to the power band of the bike, despite thinking previously that V2's pull roughly equally throughout the rev range.
Anyway, I've got it booked in next week, no way I'm going to tackle this myself. They suspect it might be electrical, so hopefully its nothing too serious.
Maybe once its sorted I'll finally get to ride a VTR as its supposed to ride. On the plus side, mechanic said the engines are bomb proof so whilst I am looking at the thick end of £300 to get all the work done that I wanted, at least I should end up with a solid machine at the end of it.

Annoying though.