I thought I was cargo culting but just confirmed that module-starter does it (and use it to start a module)

Yeah, fair enough ... but that sort of begs 2 additional questions:
1) What happens if you don't put a =head1 VERSION section in your pod;
2) Why has the absence of such a pod heading in any of my modules not caused me any problems - not to mention unbearable embarrassment and humiliation ?

Sorry ... I'm being a bit of a halfsmartarse in posing it that way.
Nothing against you, bliako, I'm really just wondering if there's some point in going to such lengths.

Cheers,
Rob