rogered apt database

[Tom Lancaster]

Hi,

I'm looking for advice here, as I can't seem to find any in the docs.
I've been following the frozen dist, and somewhere along the way I seem
to have picked up a corrupted package (php3-doc). I don't even need this
pkg, so all I want to do is uninstall it, but it's so badly rogered that
it can't even do that. Is there any way to remove all references to this
from the database manually?
Where is the database? What form does it take?

Any hints much appreciated, as this prob is preventing me largely from
doing anything else through apt (dpkg or otherwise).

Thanks,

Tom