Right, excuse me for being a newb, but I've never actually used an IRC client before. Someone care to brief me on how to get into the VO chat using it? Normally I'd log in, but until my PIN comes through, my current card's a bit useless.

One of the required steps to chatting through IRC to VO is logging into VO and linking your ingame name to your IRC name. Unless you can do that, you can't use IRC to talk to VO.
See more here.

Before you log into the IRC, please consider the following:

1. It's much easier to simply log into the game.

2. The IRC is populated almost exclusively by creeps, jerks and fat people and if you log into the IRC everyone will assume you're one of them, and no one likes fat people.

3. All the players in VO worth talking to have the IRC /ignored and so cannot hear your witty banter.

2. o/

Imp you summed that up succinctly. Its time for the Devs to get rid of IRC.

...or they could demand a fee for using the VO IRC channel, a bit like a sub? : P