Hi folks.
I've been tearing what little hair I have left out trying to find the problem with this.
nginx version 0.7.61 installed from Jeff Waughs site. On Ubuntu 9.4 Jackalope.

/etc/nginx/nginx.conf - standard, as issued. #
/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default contains
server {
listen 80;
server_name localhost ;
access_log /var/log/nginx/localhost.access.log;
location / {
root /var/www/nginx-default;
index index.html index.htm;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
}
}

/etc/nginx/fastcgi_params contains
fastcgi_param GATEWAY_INTERFACE CGI/1.1;

fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string;
fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD $request_method;
fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE $content_type;
fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param REQUEST_URI $request_uri;
fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_URI $document_uri;
fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_ROOT $document_root;
fastcgi_param SERVER_PROTOCOL $server_protocol;

fastcgi_param SERVER_SOFTWARE nginx/$nginx_version;

fastcgi_param REMOTE_ADDR $remote_addr;
fastcgi_param REMOTE_PORT $remote_port;
fastcgi_param SERVER_ADDR $server_addr;
fastcgi_param SERVER_PORT $server_port;
fastcgi_param SERVER_NAME $server_name;

# PHP only, required if PHP was built with --enable-force-cgi-redirect
fastcgi_param REDIRECT_STATUS 200;

Symptoms
http://localhost/missing.htm - error 404 correct
http://localhost - serves index.htm correct
http://localhost/present.htm - served correctly
http://localhost/present.php - can give two errors
if fastcgi gateway is running I get "No input file spcified."
if the fastcgi gateway is not up, I get Bad Gateway,
So I know the gateway is running, I telnet'ed into it - and it kicked me out.

if I run the present.php file on the command line it runs as expected.

I'm sure it is something so very simple that I'm kick myself - I just can't see what.

Any help with this much appreciated.

Ian