My shoutbox is growing far quicker than i would have expected.
33,000 shouts and growing.
What i need to be able to do is to prune lets say something like all but the last 200 shouts.
I posted in the shoutbox thread some time ago but it appears its not being actively read lately.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Did you try to use "commands (for admins)" as shown in this post?

"Commands (for admins)
Type any of these commands in the shoutbox to perform an action.
/delete newer than 07-15-2008 - delete any shout made after this date.
/delete older than 07-15-2008 - delete any shout made before this date.
/delete all - delete all shouts.
/delete newer than 5 - delete all posts having an id greater than this (mouse over any "del" link to view an id shown in the form of deleteShout(ID, 1))
/delete older than 5 - delete all posts having an id less than this (mouse over any "del" link to view an id shown in the form of deleteShout(ID, 1))"