First off, it's not at all obvious how to go in and change your status in your profile. It seems like it has to be done by clicking the "comments" link under the status, which isn't indicated clearly and isn't where I'd expect to have to click.

Anyway, I managed to delete my status, which I expected would set my profile to having no status at all. However, when I clicked Delete, it has now set my status to be a very old status that I entered about 2 years ago. What will happen if I now try and delete this status? Will it be "properly" cleared, or will another even older status appear instead? Seems this functionality is quite buggy anyway.

Yes, its buggy. Just enter "Hello!" or something for now.

Cheers

OK done, thanks.

A record of status update entries can be found by clicking on "Profile Feed" link on the left hand side of your profile page. You can manage entries from there. Only the latest status update text will show in the 'banner' at the top of your profile page. If you delete that update, the text from the previous status update will show, or if none the banner section will show as empty. Removing all status updates will also display an empty banner.

I don't think that's quite right actually. If I click into Profile Feed, I see the "dummy" status I've just entered, but not the previous one that was in place before. The other entries listed in the profile feed seem to be comments that other people have left on my profile, or that I have left on others, not status updates.

The feed contains both status updates and comments. Below is what I see logged in as a normal member on my own member (non-admin) account, and there are buttons to either delete or lock entries. You should be able to see the same. Looking at your profile through my member account, I see your previous status update and comments history.

OK, I see. The confusion's come in then because the other status update, which was briefly "promoted" to being my live status when I deleted the other one earlier today, isn't in my profile feed page, and I didn't (knowingly) delete it. It was something about getting email alerts when someone comments on our statuses, I don't remember the exact wording. George had commented on it too, and I had also commented after George. Perhaps this one status has disappeared somehow due to the general bugginess of this feature, but otherwise it works as you described.