Ok -- I can't categorically exclude that something is also irregular with my repo and debian/patches. So I reversed the existing patch, then applied your changes, dpkg-source --commit'ed locally -- and it is building now.
And inspecting the pbuilder dir while it is happening shows the two patches are in. Fingers crossed. Dirk -- http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | e...@debian.org