The robust statistic proposed by Creighton (Creighton J D E 1999 Phys. Rev. D 60 021101) and Allen et al (Allen et al 2001 Preprint gr-gc/010500) for the detection of stationary non-Gaussian noise is briefly reviewed. We compute the robust statistic for generic weak gravitational-wave signals in the mixture-Gaussian noise model to an accuracy higher than in those analyses, and reinterpret its role. Specifically, we obtain the coherent statistic for detecting gravitational-wave signals from inspiralling compact binaries with an arbitrary network of earth-based interferometers. Finally, we show that excess computational costs incurred owing to non-Gaussianity is negligible compared to the cost of detection in Gaussian noise.