One is the city of brotherly love, the home of the Liberty Bell and was once the capital of America, for about 20 minutes. The other looks like an industrial site on the way to Heathrow, on the corner of a roundabout in West London.

Not a difficult dilemma, one would think, to choose where one of the world’s most important chief executives would like to be based.

But the new head of GlaxoSmithKline, the drugs giant that pioneered the most advanced Aids drugs, has decided that he would rather brave the congested Chiswick roundabout every working day and base himself in the group’s Brentford headquarters, than copy his predecessor, J-P Garnier, and work out of Philadelphia.

Not for Andrew Witty the undulating pine forests of Pennsylvania, the Philly Cheese Steak (a meat and cheese kebab that even Glaxo’s own cholesterol drug would have trouble offsetting) and the edgy Sweet Philly soul bars.

Instead, Mr Witty has opted for a part of London that boasts a football team struggling in the old fourth division whose Great West Road, once a vibrant manufacturing centre, has seen better days.

On the plus side, however, employees of GlaxoSmithKline, rave about the beautifully designed Brentford building.

And the two sites may not, after all, be so dissimilar. Both Philadelphia and Brentford sit squarely amid a rich industrial heritage — for Philadelphia, now defunct manufacturing businesses and, for Brentford, the line of former factories such as Gillette and Firestone Tyres that now only tourists see on the way to the airport.

The Great West Road is an architect’s dream. The Gillette building (the company has since moved its manufacturing to Poland) was designed by Sir Banister Flight Fletcher in 1936 and the Firestone Tyre building, with its 1920s gates and railings, are Grade II listed.

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