Thanks for the reply.
This doesn't seem to work either. The 'simple page' will not display until the 'nitty gritty' finishes even though I am using $| = 1 :-(
try using pipe/fork/exec/some-combination. you want to get the program that outputs the page to finish even when the other script is going on. I think you can do it with a combination of fork and pipe || exec. if you follow merlyn's link, it'll probably tell you exactly what to do.