"People were always trying to persuade us to change our image," says Charlie Reid, "but we've always stuck to what we are. We have moved on a wee bit though we've gone through several glasses frames over the years and the prescriptions on the lenses have got more intense."

Mention The Proclaimers and, after asking whether they still have the glasses and the red hair ("I think that's maybe a racial stereotype," Reid politely suggests, "it's more sort of blonde, y'know?"), the first thing people will do is burst into a chorus of "But I would walk 500 miles", complete with emphatic leg kicks and a bad Scottish accent.

Starting out in the late Eighties as teenagers on the dole (they decided against calling themselves The Reid Brothers in order to "avoid the DSS although we had so few paying gigs that I think they would've laughed us out of court anyway"), Edinburgh-based twins Craig and Charlie Reid have since recorded six albums worth of energetic, melodic folk-rock.

Turning their thick accents to infectiously sweet melodies, they have a thoroughly distinctive sound which is still discernible beneath the layered arrangements and slicker production of August's Restless Soul. And yet what The Proclaimers are primarily celebrated for is providing the finale to 20 year's worth of drunken knees-ups.

"Whether people liked us or disliked us they haven't forgotten," affirms Reid. "I think sometimes the fact you really irritate people can be in some ways as engaging as when they really like you. In Scotland in particular we're getting a lot more young people coming along people who were two or three when the records came out and have grown up with them. Our songs have never not been there in their lives."

Having begun in earnest with a summer's worth of festival appearances, The Proclaimers' comeback has so far met with great approval, including a five-star live review from the usually categorically ageist NME. But the strangest tribute has come from NASA, who selected a Proclaimers song as one of the tracks to be broadcast by the Mars Rover as it explored the Red Planet.

"We get told stuff like that," laughs Charlie, "and I think people expect us to be really really impressed and awestruck by it. I couldn't really care less. I mean, you do wonder what the point is really. If it's true and the Martians get The Proclaimers then fantastic but I'm more concerned about the audience in Brighton."

Starts at 7.30pm. Tickets cost £18.50, call 01273 709709