Custom UITableViewCell always black unless set to anything but clear

Question

My custom UITableViewCells always have a black background unless I set the background of the UITableView to clear.

However I want to set the background colour to another colour and as soon as I do the cells turn black (even though the background of the control does change)

Answer 1

Does part of your custom TableViewCell involve a transparent image? Have you set the opaque property for that image to NO either programmatically or in Interface Builder?