  It is widely believed that existing electroweak data requires a Standard
Model Higgs to be light while electroweak and flavour physics constraints
require other scalars charged under the Standard Model gauge couplings to be
heavy. We analyze the robustness of these beliefs within a general scalar
sector and find both to be incorrect, provided that the scalar sector
approximately preserves custodial symmetry and minimal flavour violation (MFV).
We demonstrate this by considering the phenomenology of the Standard Model
supplemented by a scalar having SU(3)_c x SU(2)_L x U(1)_Y quantum numbers
(8,2)_(1/2) which has been argued to be the only kind of exotic flavour singlet
scalar allowed by MFV that couples to quarks. We examine constraints coming
from electroweak precision data, direct production from LEPII and the Tevatron,
and from flavour physics, and find that the observations allow both the
Standard Model Higgs and the new scalars to be simultaneously light, with
masses ~ 100 GeV, and in some cases lighter. The discovery of such light
coloured scalars could be a compelling possibility for early LHC runs, due to
their large production cross section, ~100 pb. But the observations equally
allow all the scalars to be heavy (including the Higgs), with masses ~ 1 TeV,
with the presence of the new scalars removing the light-Higgs preference that
normally emerges from fits to the electroweak precision data.
