I've also been in Controlled Airspace, doing a clockwise orbit of the city, told that there was a twin at the same level a few NM away approaching the city and I reported something along the lines of aircraft not sighted, will keep lookout. 1.5 min later rapid evasive action required. If that's what radar does for us, I'd far rather have an LCD display flashing and beeping a traffic alert with a direction and distance.
The controller in question could easily have separated us by 500ft vertically but thought that a visual lookout was fine (it wasn't). Maybe the twin didn't know what clockwise was, but that controller sure didn't watch us either.