The starter for a fluorescent tube works rather like the contact-breaker points on old car engine ignitions: it just suddenly opens the circuit, and hopes that the resulting back-emf from the ballast coil ("choke") will be big enough to "strike" the tube. Obviously, this generates huge amounts of Electro-Magnetic Interference!!

Also, once the tube's going, the discharge and the highly inductive load produce all sorts of nasty harmonics on the mains.

In all, fluorescent tubes are really nasty things where sensitive electronics is concerned.
Like Erik said, this'd be a great EMC test facility!

BTW: a flickering fluorescent tube can often be brought back to life simply by cleaning it. Again, the car ignition analogy holds: if the tube is dirty, the "striking" voltage leaks away through all the grot, and never actually starts the discharge.