Southport, home of Royal Birkdale, which hosts this year’s Open Championship, is a class act when it comes to self-promotion. It still likes to peddle the idea that Baron Georges Haussmann’s grand tree-lined boulevards of Paris were inspired by a visit from France’s Prince Louis Napoleon to Southport’s Lord Street in the 1840s.

The seaside town, although technically part of Merseyside’s Sefton council and 16 miles north of Liverpool, has always tried to distance itself from its more down-market Merseyside rivals, such as the crumbling resort of New Brighton. With one of the UK’s longest piers and miles of sandy beaches, Southport has been called “the Brighton of the north”.