Pidgin crashing on adding buddy

[Zacknafain Do'Urden]

I use Pidgin 2.6.1
(libpurple 2.6.1)
on Ubuntu 8.04

Every time I attempt to add a buddy on to any of my accounts
(yahoo, msn, google talk, icq) pidgin crashes, no error messages just
simply ceases to function.
I have tried restarting, removing and reinstalling, to no effect
I have also tried several different ways of adding buddies on - by
having them add me and then using the confirmation option as well as by
adding new or adding from the list, all with the same result.

The only option I have not yet been able to try is to add users too my
list using the original client on another computer, then re-logging in
from my own.