Flash in IE5 Background Problem

I was asked to edit a site that has some Flash embedded recently, I did the work and all went well until I opened it in IE5 (also occurs in IE5.5).

The background assigned to td elements is missing! I've re-created the bug at: http://www.intermedia-online.com/flashproblem/
This time with div tags (the effects are the same) the XHTML and CSS are in the same file so should be easily readable.

The route to reproduce the bug:

• Use IE5 or IE5.5 not any greater.
• Flash movie embedded in page.
• The CSS "background" property for some element set to an image.
• This problem also manifests itself when using the background attribute of the td element (using HTML 4.01 Transitional of course!).

The effects of the bug are:

• IE ignores all elements that use images for backgrounds on the current page.
• The problem occurs when both CSS and HTML methodologies for adding backgrounds to the td are employed.
• IE correctly renders backgrounds that do not use images but hex codes e.g. #ccc.

Other notes:

• Whether the bug affects adding an image as background to the body element is unknown but expected.
• IE ignores the whole background property declaration. So if a combination of hex code and an image are used the hex code will be ignored.
• Whilst these results are the norm, I have seen IE behave as it should do or just erratically under these conditions at apparently random times. This is especially true after a refresh or when the browser window doesn't have focus.

So there it is, the reason for such detail is that I can't find it documented on the net, although this is rather hard to believe! There are a few posts on various forums but it seems these never gain any replies.

The question that remains is: Has anyone here seen this and found a workaround?

Thanks, and apologies if this is a well known bug that slipped past my Google searches