jQuery dynamic tab colours (all except one tab)

[fox4o]

I have a UL with the class of "tabs"one li has a class of "active" The "active" tab obviously changes as a user clicks on a different tab and is used so the colour of it is different to the rest.What i want to do is select all the Li's within the "tabs" UL EXCEPT for the active one and set each one a different colour by appending CSS background for each.The amount of tabs can differ depending on which page they are on I.E one page may have four tabs but another may have 6 or 7.If i was grabbing them all i wouldnt have a problem but im not sure how to go about it to try and exclude the active tab since i had planned on using Nth which would INCLUDE the active tab?Any help appreciated.