Last month I was invited to tour my home town by Wolverhampton Business Champions, a regeneration body attempting to drum up interest in the city. The former beating heart of the Industrial Revolution gets such a bad press, being cited recently by Lonely Planet as one of the worst cities on earth, alongside San Salvador and Detroit, and facing a host of problems, not least empty shops (reportedly, 17 per cent are vacant, significantly above the national average of 10.6 per cent), a city centre that is reportedly missing 25 of the top 100 national shopping brands (which means it loses out to nearby shopping centres in Telford, Dudley, and Birmingham) and, according to a recent report, a night-time drinking culture.

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The tide, however, appears