The bar at Neo Hotel
19 Oriental Place
Brighton
01273 711104

Which bar are you perched on, like a binge-drinking trollopy vision in salmon pink, tonight?

Welcome to the bar at Neo Hotel, Brighton's jewel of a fashionably re-invented, restyled and contemporised B&B!

A fashionable B&B? How does that work, then?

Some clever type with a refined, inventive aesthetic (in this case, Steph Harding, one-time interiors stylist) finds a dilapidated four-storey property on a down-at-heel but still-elegant Regency square. She makes it over with a combination of brilliant wallpapers, black-veneered wooden floors, antique chandeliers and outrageously pretty staff, and cool, fabulous people like me start flocking to it.

Ha! And the actual bar?

It's a minuscule but perfectly proportioned effort, located on the ground floor. Over the course of the past 10 months or so, since Neo Hotel first opened its doors, it has become the spiritual home of buzzy, arty, decadent types - hotel residents and their guests, essentially. It is, barman Ed assures me, by turns either very, very wild (more than once, he has baled out at 2am, leaving his punters to their own devices, after furnishing them with crates of white wine and champagne and corkscrews) or very calm and civilised.

And how's Ed with a cocktail list?

More than competent. Although, by his own admission, he's 'not trained or anything - Steph keeps saying I should go on a course', he's definitely alright: chucks a bit of stuff together, whacks a slice of lime on the side of the glass, makes something (mainly, the hotel's signature NeoClassic) perfectly drinkable. He's also refreshingly unprissy about it all. Cocktail Girl was beginning to tire of the endless types who could identify a brand of premium vodka at 50 paces, while telling you about the origins of the Manhattan.

You fancy him.

No. Not exactly. He does have the advantages of being a student at Cocktail Girl's own dear alma mater, Sussex. And also of being an actual real-life male model. And he's certainly not uneasy on the eye. But he's also a child.

Now you get morals?

Some. A smattering.

So, if you didn't try unsuccessfully to seduce the bar staff, precisely what kind of a night did you spend in Neo Hotel?

Well, after gatecrashing and totally monopolising someone called Mel's birthday party with my sitting-on-the-bar antics, I got quite drunk with owner Steph, considered swinging off the chandelier, decided that was probably a bad idea, and went to bed. Job well done.