tom tom - i had exactly the same error as you and my site didnt work. Some of the menu items were missing (eg Admin > Extensions) and some of the others bombed out with SQL errors.

After a lot of work I managed to get things working - although I still get the same error during the install - everything now works.

The issue was a couple of the third part modules adding triggers to some of the main SQL tables. I uninstalled both modules but one still left a trigger - causing further hassle. After a manual clean everything looks good so far. The site has been up and running for a week and I've added pages, updated settings etc etc all without issues.

This is the second time I've been burnt by poorly coded third party modules - especially ones that dont uninstall corerctly.