Thanks MF.
How here's the thing.
After 3 fruitless hours trying to start the thing on the weekend, today I went out, turned on fuel, gave it a minute to fill the chamber (may have had some left in there from yesterday's failed attempts) , put throttle lever on Start, second pull it starts.
When I have had carby apart the rotating cam seems to be in the right place relative to everything else ie cable position correct. I have noticed however that when running, the slowest running is not when lever at "slow" but about 1/3 - 1/2 the travel between slow and max.