Make sure your display setings are on textured (the furthest right of the various 'balls'), rather than the simple shaded one a couple of steps to the left... sory if that's not completely clear, but my brain isfeeling a tad mashed right now...

wait a minute (rummages for manual)

Right, found it... it's the 'document displat style' button, in a line on the UI... the default setting within P5 and 6 (although they changed it in 7) is Smooth Shaded... ths uses only the diffuse colour setting for it's colouring. This is fine if you have a pink model, but if you apply a texture map, the diffuse colour node is set to white, and so your whole model goes very pale. If, however, you set the display settings to 'texture shaded', then it looks to see what, if any, texture maps are applied to a given model and displays them.

Is that any clearer? :)

jonthecelt