[Hampshire] Init script running but not working at boot time…

I've been desperately trying to get my lirc IR reciever
working..however, when I try to run the lircd program at boot time via
rc.local it simply doesn't start (ps -ef | grep -i lirc produces
nothing after boot).

If I run the same command as root after the system has booted it
starts just fine. I decided to do it properly and use an init script
to start/stop lircd:

(I used gantzgraf:/etc# update-rc.d lirc defaults to make it auto-start)

/etc/init.d/lircd:

#!/bin/sh
# Carry out specific functions when asked to by the system
case "$1" in
  start)
    setserial /dev/ttyS0 uart none
    modprobe lirc_serial
    lircd -p 0666 /dev/lirc0 &
    ;;
  stop)
    pkill lircd
    rmmod lirc_serial
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/lirc {start|stop}"
    exit 1
    ;;
  esac

exit 0

Oh yes, it has been chmodded 755 too of course!

Now, this script runs fine like I say when I call it manually as root
on the system, yet lircd just refuses to start at boot time (the
modprobe still works)..I'm pretty much out of ideas!

I understand this probably isn't the nicest way of starting lirc, but
the debian package didn't work at all (missing the lirc_serial driver,
doesn't do the setserial thing etc..)

Any help would be great...perhaps I have to give the module time to
settle or something before running lirc?

Thanks,
John.