Hi
I too have been having this problem, its been going on for months now. Initially I had been using outlook express to collect mail and process the spam, but it just kept timing out and would only download once in a blue moon. I had a chat with a friend who works for Orange customer services and he suggested some changes to try, but it made absolutely no difference whatsoever.
It got so bad that eventually I gave up and just removed it. I then tried logging in there directly from the website, which is worse because there are no spam filters set up and its about as slow to load as OE had previously been. It's now full with over 12000 messages and I really cannot be bothered to do anything about it. Sitting and ploughing through that pile of predominantly spam email scouring for rare messages from friends is not my idea of a fun time.