Guy closed the bug which contained this patch:
> Apply this:
>
> @@ -56,6 +56,7 @@
> if p=`dpkg-deb -f -- "$1" package`;
> then
> v=`dpkg-deb -f -- "$1" version`;
> + v=${v#[0-9]*:}
> r=`dpkg-deb -f -- "$1" revision`;
> if [ -z "$r" ];
> thenOf course, this will generate filenames containing colons, which may be suboptimal for many applications. Perhaps I should have used a comma for the epoch character to start with ... Ian.

