VLC not starting up

I have installed VLC from synaptic put it does not startup.
When I run as root I get:
VLC media player 0.8.6c Janus
starting VLC root wrapper... using UID 1000 (michael)
[00000001] main private warning: config file /home/michael/.vlc/vlcrc does not exist yet
The program '.' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)'.
  (Details: serial 476 error_code 11 request_code 145 minor_code 5)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)