[vile] How to fix background colour problem on BSD system?

[Eur Ing Chris Green]

I am running vile 9.5 on freebsd4.8 (yes I know that's ancient but
it's what my hosting company runs).

I have copied my 'standard' .vilerc file across from another system
and it's OK except for one thing.  All coloured text is getting a
black background instead of the default pale grey, this makes a bit
close to unreadable!

I know this is probably to do with the underlying libraries etc. but I
need some hints as to what to look at please.

-- 
Chris Green