combining mesh

Iv imported a character from a .LWO and if I go into outliner view, I notice that blender has broken up the model into a number of different meshes, which is causing problems, because im rigging the character, and now have to apply every change to every mesh separately… how do I combine all the meshes into one?

ctrl-j .

Select meshs with SHIFT and LMB in OBJECT MODE and CTR+J .

thanks that works perfectly