Thanks haukex - it turns out MIME::Base64 is there so perhaps all the overrides are not needed. See Re^2: Replacing a module dependency

I actually think your suggestion of making a new module that inherits from MIME::Lite to be more elegant than that!

That's very nice to hear - thanks

However, note in general you probably want to consider switching to one of the newer Email::* modules...

Some time ago I suggested changing away from MIME::Lite and someone more knowledgable than I (hippo I think but I'm not certain and I cannot find the node) suggested that for my needs, it was a suitable choice. The code this is used in is relatively new (less than one year) so perhaps future code should start using an alternative...

UPDATE:
It was Corion here -> Re^3: printing output of a perl script to the Email body