Apologies if the solution is obvious but I'm stumped!

I want to launch byobu from within my Gnome 3 desktop environment on 12.04 but it's not working for me as yet. Here's what I have:

created a windows list file ~/.byobu/windows.mrb then tried to launch byobu from within the gnome terminal with:

$ BYOBU_WINDOWS=mrb byobu

But it gives me the default windows list, NOT my windows list. I followed these instructions from the wiki: http://goo.gl/omgl8

Here is a sanitised version of my windows.mrb file:

    screen -t local bash
    screen -t name1 ssh xxx@xxx
    screen -t name2 ssh root@xxx
    screen -t name3 bash

Appreciate the time and effort.

Cheers Brendan