"works" in the sense that it produces output.  But it doesn't produce the output it used to, which is the same text as the initial banner when you type help().  I believe the existing behavior in this case is correct.  With your patch it produces the same output as "help('help')" at the python prompt does, and what that output describes doesn't work at the 'help>' prompt.

Thanks for tackling this.

Hmm.  How about adding the special case to _Helper.__call__?