OK. Bought another 3.3v 8Hmz Mini-Pro + USBasp programmer lead from Bitsbox.
Nope... still totally ignores it.
Downloaded version 1.8.8 IDE (glad to see they have not bothered to fix the uploading progress bar issue)... no different.
I am out of ideas. My usual method of programming through an UNO doesn't work, and I cannot think of anything else to try.
Time to move this project to a Raspberry Zero