In the race to engulf greensward at irresponsible speeds which was the 1970s New Town scheme, it was hard for a fledgling metropolis to stand out amid the clamour. If you were neither notorious like Milton Keynes, nor hideous like Cumbernauld, how to get people looking – however disgustedly – in your direction? For plucky little Lancashire conurbation Runcorn, the answer was twofold: piggyback on the more well-known nearby town of Warrington, and encourage anyone interested in moving to the exciting new hyphenated location of ‘Warrington-Runcorn’ to ‘Ring Eileen Bilton now’ for more details. To let daylight in on magic for a second, Eileen Bilton was no more a solitary secretary in a box-room with a Trimphone and a pile of brochures than Ken Morse was just one bloke with one very busy rostrum camera, but the name of a rapidly expanding real estate partnership. Still, that’s the new town all over – promises exotic intrigue, delivers the same old splother as usual.