watchdog reports MySQL down

[basic612]

plesk 8.0.0 on centos 4.2 server, watchdog reports that MySQL is down, even though I know it is running fine:

The MySQL service on host localhost is down.

I also don't get any info re. MYSQL in the statistics tab.

watchdog config is vanilla since the 7.5.4->8.0.0 plesk upgrade on this server.

does anyone have watchdog monitoring MYSQL successfully? I keep getting errors / restarts. Have had to disable for now