What do you call a public toilet which has been turned into a pavement cafe?

It sounds like the start of a bad joke but this was the dilemma faced by Tracy Jansen when she bought the Grade II listed toilet in the Old Steine, Brighton, three months ago.

Then inspiration presented itself in the shape of her husband Frank - and the Frank-In-Steine Cafe was born.

She said: "We argued over the name for ages. Frank wanted to call it the Smelly Deli but I won in the end. There are a lot of cafes in Brighton but, because many of them are national chains, they all look identical. We knew we wanted our business to have a strong individual identity and Frankenstein gave us one."

The cafe, which is laid out on two floors, is filled with memorabilia of Frankenstein's monster, ranging from framed movie posters to a menu of ghoulish-sounding drinks.

Downstairs in the basement, there is a life-size model of the monster itself.

The horror theme has also given Tracy an excuse to remove her husband's pet frogs from her living room.

She said: "I always objected to them, particularly as my husband is away working a lot and so I end up looking after them.

"They are horrible things. They look just like skinned chickens, though they are really tame. However, that made them perfect for this place."

Tracy, a mother of three, bought the art deco toilet block from Simon and Caroline Heath three months ago.

Mr and Mrs Heath began the job of converting the 75-year-old building into a pavement cafe last year and their progress was filmed for the documentary Brighton Rocks.

However, the cost of redeveloping the block exceeded their original estimates and they decided to sell up.

Tracy said: "The building had been shut for ten years and when you start work on something like that, it is a bottomless pit. When we bought it, there was still a lot of work to be done and the cost of doing it was extortionate.

"Because the building used to be a toilet, I was keen to get rid of all the old fixtures and fittings from the inside. I wanted it to be completely new. I was working totally flat out to get it open."