Finally got round to updating irssi-text packaging and fixing a few bugs that would be nice to get into sarge if I can. You can find a copy on my website. Currently in need of a sponsor, hint hint.

 irssi-text (0.8.9-2) unstable; urgency=medium
 .
   * Upload medium as it would be useful to get the irssi-common and perl fixes
     into sarge.
   * Conflict with irssi-common (Closes: #263320)
   * Update to Standards-Version 3.6.1
   * Update to building against libglib2.0
   * Fix the menu file quoting
   * Depend on autotools-dev and update config.{status,guess} automatically
     (Closes: #296989)
   * Recompile against libperl5.8 (5.8.4) (Closes: #248020, #224930, #247104)

Update:Steve McIntyre has sponsored an upload of i386, powerpc and alpha for me