emacs24 does not start reliably when run in Kubuntu 13.04

If I try to run emacs24 in Kubuntu 13.04, (KDE 4.10.0) I am finding that the GUI starts only some of the time.

If the GUI doesn't start then I will only see a process running in htop or similar.

Starting emacs in a terminal window with the -nw argument or installing the Lucid interface shows that emacs does run each time it starts so the problem is either with the Emacs GTK interface or the GTK libraries.

Emacs23 also exhibits a similar problem

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
Package: emacs24 (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-9.18-generic 3.8.1
Uname: Linux 3.8.0-9-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.9-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Mar 3 14:26:31 2013
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-01-05 (57 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Alpha amd64 (20130104)
MarkForUpload: True
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 TERM=screen-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: emacs24
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)