mondays mechanical woes

it's been a bad start to the week. Sorry it's long winded, but i'm hoping to find a bit of light relief here on the org. Hopped on the sv this morning to trundle in to work. Fired up as normal on the choke, pootled off down the road, and after about 300yds the bike lurched, spluttered, bogged and stalled. I pulled in clutch and rolled to a halt. Back into neutral, switched off ignition, gave it a mo. Switched ignition back on, all tell-tales on the dash as expected. Thumbed the starter and it was very reluctant to turn over and was a bit mechanically noisy when starting, and coughed and backfired several times, and died again. After a few attempts and a few sooty backfires eventually got it going on what seemed like one cylinder, and rode the few hundred yards back home.

Fast forward to this evening and I thought i'd just see whether it is still playing silly beggars. It started fine on the choke from cold as it had done this morning, then while it was sat there idling it suddenly died. No lurch or stutter, just stopped dead. Fired back up and ticked over again no prob's then as I crawled out at walking pace it died again.

I have now noticed a mechanical rattle when using the starter that sounds like something spinning to a halt after the starter button is released.

I'm going to have a prod round and check the usual suspects like dodgy connections, poor spark, knacked spark plug, loose coil connections, earth fault in loom, etc, after I've munched my tea, but thought i'd ask you good folk of the org if you had any suggestions as to the possible cause. It's a 2001 curvy s with about 26k on it. Because of the rattle (hopefully not a death rattle) I'm thinking that it may be a failing starter motor that's intermittently jamming and stalling the bike, or a dodgy starter clutch? Any ideas gratefully received . . . .