By day she is a mild-mannered legal secretary. But after dark quite a transformation comes over Emma Clout.

Beneath the calm, bespectacled exterior lies the heart of a showgirl, who will soon be seen clad in fishnet stockings wowing the audience at the Barn Theatre, Seaford, on a nightly basis.

Emma, from Hankham, near Pevensey, is in rehearsals to play showgirl Katie Brown in Calamity Jane.

If she seems familiar, Emma, 32, may well have caught your eye on celebrity soundalike show Stars in Their Eyes, where last April she performed, as Mitzi Gaynor, a song from the musical South Pacific in the show hosted by Matthew Kelly.

Emma, who works for Wynne Baxter in Cornfield Road, Eastbourne, has been performing since she was 13 but things have not always gone smoothly.

Her amateur acting career has been plagued by a series of painful mishaps.

She has broken her arm falling off a horse, her nose in a car crash and her collarbone from being hurled to the floor slightly too hard by her leading man.

But accidents have done nothing to deter her from treading the boards.

She said: "I have been up for open auditions in London but it's not easy because you have to take time off work and pay for the travel.

"I'm quite happy doing it as an amateur. I get to do quite a few lead roles."

Tickets for the show, running from May 20 to May 24, are available from Stephen Newberry and Partners estate agents, 53 Church Street, Seaford.