I cant believe im asking this...

<td background="images/image.gif">THIS TEXT WILL APPEAR ABOVE THE image.gif</td>

background-image: url(http://image.gif);

HTML:
<table id="whatever">
   <tr>
      <td>Your text goes here</td>
    </tr>
</table>

CSS:

#whatever {
     width: 700px; /*apply your own sizes of course*/
     height: 500px; /*apply your own sizes of course*/
     background: #fff url("images/image.gif") repeat;  
     }