[AUCTeX] trouble customizing TeX-electric-escape

[Michael Smart]

Hi,

I have recently upgraded to auctex 11.85 (from 10.x), running with Gnu Emacs on
Windows XP SP2.

I find that that \ is bound to TeX-electric-macro (a change in the default?)
which I don't want.  I tried customizing TeX-electric-escape but this does not
seem to be respected.  I tried adding 

(setq TeX-electric-escape nil)

to my .emacs as well but still nothing.

However when I eval (setq TeX-electric-escape nil) interactively then \ is
unbound for the current session.

What am I doing wrong please?

Michael Smart