I have been trawling through this thread and is quite interesting, i had shares in brokers Artemis and Jupiter for 3 years (made a few thousand which served as a deposit on my house)
I had been looking through the construction industry and found that Taylor Wimpey plc (TW.) had dropped throughout the recession from over 100p down to 13p so threw a couple of hundred in for the long term as im sure it will slowly work its way back up.
I use Barclays Stockbroker for this, is this as good as the ones you use, as i am thinking of putting some more down soon.