bug#5238: 23.1.50; gzip: stdout: Broken pipe

Gentlemen, both
$ emacs -Q     -eval '(compile "locale -m")'
$ emacs -Q -nw -eval '(compile "locale -m")'
work, however the former has lots of "gzip: stdout: Broken pipe",
the latter doesn't.
$ emacs -Q     -eval '(compile "strace locale -m")'
shows it happens around
clone(child_stack=0, flags=...

In GNU Emacs 23.1.50.1 (i486-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.18.3)
 of 2009-11-29 on elegiac, modified by Debian
 (emacs-snapshot package, version 1:20091128-1)

I notice emacs 23.1.1 is also affected.