Here's a simple solution that doesn't worry how many lines a record spans.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

sub do_stuff_with {
   # Silly proof of results
   my ($first, $text, $name, $last) = @_;
   print "First Bit: [$first]\n";
   print "Some Text: [$text]\n";
   print "The  Name: [$name]\n";
   print "Last  Bit: [$last]\n\n";
}

# Here's the meat...
my $chunk;
while ( chomp($chunk .= <DATA>) ) {
   if ( $chunk =~ /([^|]+)\|([^|]+)\|([^|]+)\|([^|]+)/ ) {
      my ($first, $text, $name, $last) = ($1,$2,$3,$4);
      $text =~ s/\s+/ /g;
      do_stuff_with($first, $text, $name, $last);
      $chunk = '';
   }
}

__DATA__
friend|some text here|john|any
friend|some other text here|mary|void
friend|some text here but broken up
 into a few
 lines|simon|any
friend|some more text|john|any
[download]

This is fairly robust (depending on how much variation there is in your data). You might want to check for an incomplete record after dropping out of the 'while' loop.

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"Perl is a mess and that's good because the
problem space is also a mess." - Larry Wall