Serial objects within another class

[alidaf]

I'm not sure if this is the best place to post this but after trying to troubleshoot a problem on the Arduino forums here, it has been suggested that this may be an IDE based issue...

My class definition tries to use Serial for debugging but serial communication fails for any use within the instantiated object and the board has to be reset.

The class definition is:
class Channel
{
public:
Channel(uint8_t channel, uint8_t led_pin, Stream* serial) :
channel(channel)
{
stream = serial;
};
~Channel()
{}
public:
private:
Stream* stream;
void dbgprint(const char* a);
void dbgprintln(const char* a);
};

The objects are created before setup():

Channel channel0(0, LED_GPIO_L, &Serial);
Channel channel1(1, LED_GPIO_R, &Serial);

and Serial is initialised in setup():

Serial.begin(115200);
while(!Serial);

The debugging functions attempt to use the object version of serial:

void Channel::dbgprint(const char* a)
{
#ifdef DEBUG
stream->print(a);
#endif
}

void Channel::dbgprintln(const char* a)
{
#ifdef DEBUG
stream->println(a);
#endif
}

but using either of these results in the serial port being lost.