timthumb works for entire multisite except parent site

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Going to the parent site of the network: http://www.victoriahall.com/news - 
see the thumbnails failing.
2. Going to a subdomain of the network: http://liverpool.victoriahall.com/news/ 
- timthumb works
3.

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

The error I am receiving:

Could not find the internal image you specified.
Cache File:
docRoot: /home/vhall1/public_html/wp-content/blogs.dir/1

Query String : 
src=http://www.victoriahall.com/http://www.victoriahall.comwp-content/uploadsupl
oads/2012/08/award_2.jpg&h=47&w=55&zc=1&q=100&a=c
TimThumb version : 2.8

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
2.8 with multisite mod

Please provide any additional information below.
I can see the problems with the url and the doc root but I can't find a fix. 
Most multisite problems I had involved editing the settings in wordpress, not 
the timthumb file.
I can't find why the site url is appearing twice or why it's going to the 
/blogs.dir/1 folder.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by sttierna...@gmail.com on 5 Mar 2013 at 1:02

hardia09 / timthumb

timthumb works for entire multisite except parent site #437