Problem with using slrnpull with Pan/Thunderbird: no connection to localhost:119

[Rosalind Mitchell]

I set up slrn to work fine, dealing directly with an external nntp
server.  Then I installed slrnpull, and set that up to pull a small
newsfeed from the external server and put it in a local news spool.  By
tweaking my .slrnrc file and pointing slrn at the spool, everything was
fine.

So far, so good.

Then, I figured, I should be able to point Pan or Thunderbird at
localhost port 119 and I'd be able to use those news clients with the
spool.  No such luck.  Both Pan and Thunderbird try to connect to
localhost but both fail.  Pan's event log reports "Error connecting to
"localhost" (connection refused)

Something's going wrong - perhaps with permissions?  But it works fine
with slrn so why not with Pan or Thunderbird?

Can anybody throw any light on this?  I tried Google but can't find
anything helpful.

Rosie