Python will return a tuple whether there are parentheses around the returned values or not.
I'm just sick of my editor complaining about this all over the place :)
This has never been documented, and I'm not sure it's ever been used outside
sytest.
It's quite a lot of poorly-maintained code, so I'd like to get rid of it.
For now I haven't removed the database table; I suggest we leave that for a
future clearout.
