I ran into a problem with the Freshy theme and WordPress 2.2 where it would not display my links, and instead showed the database error listed above. I found the offending code in sidebar.php, line 24, where it says
if ($ver == "2.1") {
Change that to >= "2.1"
and you’re in business.
I’ve written more about it at
https://www.jedfonner.com/2007/06/19/wordpress-22-and-freshy-theme-links-error/