stsadm error when using createsiteinnewdb

Had a peculiar problem where a customer received errors when using the above command to provision a new suite collection.
The error was: stsadm: Value cannot be null. Parameter name: v1

It appears that this was entirely down to a change in SQL access rights for the service running WSS

Further investigation found the following full error in the logs:

stsadm: Value cannot be null. Parameter name: v1 Callstack: at System.Version.op_LessThan(Version v1, Version v2) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPDatabase.EnsureSqlDatabase(SqlConnectionStringBuilder connectionString) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPDatabase.SetDatabaseOptions(SqlConnectionStringBuilder connectionString, Dictionary`2 options, Boolean wYukon) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPDatabase.Provision(SqlConnectionStringBuilder connectionString, SqlFile sqlFileId, String sqlSignaturePath, Dictionary`2 options) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPContentDatabase.Provision() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPContentDatabaseCollection.Add(SPContentDatabase database, Boolean provision, Boolean allowUpgrade, Boolean flushChan...