Loughborough University has released a podcast on "What makes a good Research Student". It was surprising interesting. You can download it here:
http://learn.lboro.ac.uk/mod/podcast/media/3615/311/What_makes_a_good_research_student.mp3

NB: I have no affiliation with this apart from being a Lboro student.

Thanks for the link. Very interesting to hear the supervisor's perspective.

I certainly agree about being openminded and taking ownership of the ideas - the student should be the one to direct the ideas with prompts from the supervisor, not the other way round.

I found the comments about flexibility rang a lot of bells, as did the sheer bloody-minded determination required ;)