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The 5 letter vertical chap is a red herring, you need a couple of 6 letter vertical chaps

Thanks cd, I have now found it, so all done. But talk about obscure! Not at all happy with this puzzle.

Oh dear. Just cannot see the cryptic representation of the statement from the vertical duo. I know the statement and that the cryptic representation must be in 5 (or six if they overlap) cells.
Does it work in a similar way to the longer cryptic representation of the other statement?
Others seem to have found it easily so I worry that I may have made an error in the grid fill.
Incidentally, I have a digital subscription for the Times which I really only use for the Listener. It is quite expensive - especially as I have just started subscribing to the Magpie which seems to be excellent value! I phoned them today to cancel it having become really frustrated with this offering but the nice lady persuaded me to keep it on by offering a 75% discount for the next 12 months!
Always worth challenging the system.

Smithsax, think in American terms rather than European and yes, it is cryptically constructed.

It took me quite a long time to twig.

Finally finished, what a bloody awful puzzle. Seriously hope Colleague has a long hard look at himself after that.

Would have been a neat idea if the endgame hadn't been made pointlessly arduous by using adjusted surnames and including a completely random red herring.

The second (shorter) cryptic representation is completely obvious if you have the right quote - the one from ODQ.

Ah - I don’t have the ODQ. I give up.
It feels like this puzzle started with one quotation and the altered surnames and the other was bolted on later as an afterthought.

I've been surprised by some of the comments on here. I sometimes (25%) fail to complete the Listener. Maybe I was just lucky but I found this one very straightforward. As soon as I spotted the long name in the grid, I thought it might be those particular circumstances (from the title) and that statement so completing the trio wasn't difficult. I'd already noticed the main surname from the duo. I wasn't aware of the second statement but a quick Google (combined with some words from the first statement) confirmed it and gave me the second name of the duo, The cryptic representations weren't too difficult to spot from the two statements. Not too much grid-searching and I never saw any red herrings. So, maybe just a lucky guess early on but I enjoyed this one. I'll probably be back here for help with 4814 :-)

Simond9x. I had a similar experience to you until the last cryptic representation. (I have now found it)
All references I found on the internet all included a five letter word ending in Y or a four letter word ending in M. I gather the IDQ uses six letter pleural word which does not seem to come up anything like as frequently on google searches.
If you know the correct word finding it cryptically represented in a straight line is easy.
It is near impossible if you don’t.

Ah, the plural word was in the first result returned by my Google so I didn't look any further.

From the Listener website
https://listenercrossword.com/List_Intro.html#advice
Apart from Chambers, the ODQ and Brewer's are suggested as reference sources for solvers, and it follows that thematic quotations will normally be based on what is given in ODQ.