"Ever since I started performing I've always had an impact," says Maggie K de Monde. "I mean, I'm 6 foot 2 - you can't not make an impression."

You may have spotted her more recently modelling for This Morning or starring alongside Hugh Grant in About A Boy. But this leggy songstress first made her name in the early Eighties as the front-woman of Swans Way and Scarlet Fantastic - two bands whose garish videos and raunchy song-writing regularly propelled them into the higher reaches of the charts.

De Monde has never been out of action - for a while she was the proprietress of Eldorado, a Notting Hill club at which the likes of the Chemical Brothers would launch their records.

But three years ago she moved from London to Eastbourne ("I'm so taken by the place - it's like living in a time warp, an Agatha Christie novel"). When she turned up a few months ago at one of the Joogleberry's nights, Brighton was struck anew by the force of her performance.

So struck, in fact, that de Monde has been invited back to host her own night of alternative cabaret, a task she leapt at with a newly honed eye for local talent.

Guests include Jess Russo ("a fantastic chanteuse - only 19 but with a belting voice"), Miss Annick ("our house diva, somewhere between Annie Lennox and Lisa Stansfield"), and the sporadically filthy Leify Tree, a singing cowboy all the way from West Virginia. "I find it difficult," sighs de Monde, "to stop him from wearing the full gear these days".

The hostess will be book-ending the evening with a touch of French cabaret.