Bit of a snag when testing from development server - need a tip

Ok so I am trying to test this module from my development environment, its a local virtualBox replica of my server.

The problem is that I cannot use localhost obviously because I have not replicated, nor do I want to, the database for phplist.

I have searched around but only found info to use # skip-networking in my.cnf however in my version of mysql 5.0.67 it doesnt use this setting and says

How can I enable access to this database from my external testing environment without blowing open mysql in a "less secure" way?

I'm still digging around google but I figured someone else might know the answer around here.