Thanks a lot Xerxes and Sueposer! Maybe I didn't quite read up on how Carrara works before I got carried away. I simply thought it would work the same way as in DS - dbbl click the character in the content view to load it, dbbl click the material in the content view to apply it to the character etc. Dragging the shaders manually from the shader view worked perfectly. Just a new way of thinking I suppose...

Just one tiny problem though. Once I tweaked my shaders I can save the full body shader as a preset, so far so good. But when I apply the shader to a new character, the names of the body part shaders change their name to "My preset 1", "My preset 2" etc instead of "SkinFace", "SkinTorso". How the heck would I know what is what if I want to change the color of the nails or something?