No grub menu or splash in 11.04 - how to get it back?

[Chris Green]

I have an xubuntu 11.04 installation on an Intel chipset system and,
between the BIOS splash screens and the GUI login screen there is just
nothing, no splash screen, no text - nothing!

This hadn't really troubled me until recently when I was trying to
investigate what is taking such a long time at boot and I realised that
I could no longer see the boot sequence.

I have tried various changes to /etc/default/grub which should make
*something* appear but there's always nothing.  

During boot the display tells me that it is seeing a connection but
that's all, nothing appears.  The Intel display chipset is an i915 I
think and I'm using an HDMI connection to my monitor.

Any/all ideas to fix this would be most welcome.

-- 
Chris Green