[thelist] How do I replicate this table behaviour in CSS?

[Chris Kavanagh]

Dear list,

I'd like certain paragraphs in my client's website to have a background 
colour.  The colour should fill 100% of the column, but the contents 
will usually be less than 100% wide.

The paragraphs will be created on the fly by my client, so doing this 
needs to be extremely simple.  (He'll be using Contribute so I can 
train him to an extent.)

The content might be text - one or several paragraphs - or it might be 
images.

My instinct is to tell him to knock up a table each time with 
width:100% and a bgcolor, but I hear that using tables for presentation 
is considered by some to be somewhat gauche, so I wonder if such a 
thing is possible in CSS.

Muchos gracias,
CK.