diff --git a/AUTHORS b/AUTHORS
index 1f8e40edbef..993b905dddc 100644
--- a/AUTHORS
+++ b/AUTHORS
@@ -71,6 +71,7 @@ answer newbie questions, and generally made Django that much better:
     Jonathan Buchanan <jonathan.buchanan@gmail.com>
     Trevor Caira <trevor@caira.com>
     Ricardo Javier Cárdenes Medina <ricardo.cardenes@gmail.com>
+    Graham Carlyle <graham.carlyle@maplecroft.net>
     Antonio Cavedoni <http://cavedoni.com/>
     C8E
     cedric@terramater.net
diff --git a/django/views/static.py b/django/views/static.py
index b556c60ca6f..f0e43ffe4e1 100644
--- a/django/views/static.py
+++ b/django/views/static.py
@@ -33,6 +33,7 @@ def serve(request, path, document_root=None, show_indexes=False):
 
     # Clean up given path to only allow serving files below document_root.
     path = posixpath.normpath(urllib.unquote(path))
+    path = path.lstrip('/')
     newpath = ''
     for part in path.split('/'):
         if not part:
diff --git a/tests/regressiontests/views/tests/static.py b/tests/regressiontests/views/tests/static.py
index 0a67cf543ec..c731b249e8a 100644
--- a/tests/regressiontests/views/tests/static.py
+++ b/tests/regressiontests/views/tests/static.py
@@ -12,4 +12,12 @@ class StaticTests(TestCase):
         for filename in media_files:
             response = self.client.get('/views/site_media/%s' % filename)
             file = open(path.join(media_dir, filename))
-            self.assertEquals(file.read(), response.content)
\ No newline at end of file
+            self.assertEquals(file.read(), response.content)
+
+    def test_copes_with_empty_path_component(self):
+        file_name = 'file.txt'
+        response = self.client.get('/views/site_media//%s' % file_name)
+        file = open(path.join(media_dir, file_name))
+        self.assertEquals(file.read(), response.content)
+        
+