Dynamic text setMask & Loadvars with render as HTML

I have used the tutorial on masking dynamic text to set up a file that pulls it’s content from a remote file and loads in…

the content of the external file looks like this:
&variablename=content goes here<br><br>

My problem is that it masks fine if I don’t have the ‘Render text as HTML’ on, but prints “content goes here br br”

To have it understand the <br> I turned the render as HTML on - but it breaks it, not displaying the content at all.

Any suggestions?

Thanks
Helen