Paul thanks for your help
You are correct the TAB colour is in the css file just replaced that with a gif
Adjusted the tab.tpl and now at least it looks a bit better
Replaced this html in the customer/tab.tpl if anybody might be interested
I need more practice at this
<TABLE border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<TD height="1">[img]{$ImagesDir}/spacer.gif[/img]</TD>
<TR>
<TD width="75" height="30" class="Tab" align="center">{$tab_title}</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD width="1" height="9">[img]{$ImagesDir}/spacer.gif[/img]</TD>
<TD height="1">[img]{$ImagesDir}/spacer.gif[/img]</TD>
<TD width="1" height="9">[img]{$ImagesDir}/spacer.gif[/img]</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>