conky and local mail

Killing myself trying to get conky 1.4.2 on my Xubuntu 6.10 box to list
local mail - /var/mail : failed to find anything workable on the web. Have
mailx and fetchmail on the system - both are useful and I have configured
fetchmail successfully. Here's part of my conky config file:

#local mail
mail_spool $MAIL

and under TEXT

$color${hr}
Email:
System Mail: $alignr${mails} new messages

Even though there's two pieces of mail for my user in /var/mail
zero (0) is listed in the conky display.

Remote mail works fine - even before I added fetchmail:

$color${hr}
Email: $alignr${pop3_unseen ISP.here username passwd [-i 60]}new messages

Any help / hints to resolve this localhost mail issue is welcome!
--
BlackTopBum
Reason 99% of what you like to do is illegal
is that 99% of the laws shouldn't be in place.

.