Now I know very little about Perl OO (which saves you from that lecture ;-) but I'd like to point out the benefits of use diagnostics;, which, when added to your test code prints something like:

Can't call method "start_table" without a package or object reference 
+at
        D:\Perl\tmp\test.pl line 7 (#1)

    (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by t
+he
    object reference or package name contains an expression that retur
+ns
    a defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package
+ name.
    Something like this will reproduce the error:

        $BADREF = 42;
        process $BADREF 1,2,3;
        $BADREF->process(1,2,3);

Uncaught exception from user code:
        Can't call method "start_table" without a package or object re
+ference at
 D:\Perl\tmp\test.pl line 7.
[download]

This lead me to your sub new and I noticed that you were returning 1 instead of $this.

(This also lead me to the perlobj manpage and the benefits of the two-argument version of bless()... hey, I'm surfing Perl!)

Update: use diagnostics should not be used in production code as it uses a lot of RAM and slows your load time... and by then it won't be necessary will it?

--
I'd like to be able to assign to an luser