It's so bad that I did wonder if Azed had started down one track, then gone down another, and ended up with a clue that was neither one thing nor the other.
I'm glad to hear that you're an Azed fan - for those who appreciate inventive and accurate clueing (17d in this puzzle excepted on both counts!) there is surely no better regularly-published crossword.
Incidentally, Azed always tries to avoid clueing the same word twice in the same way - when you think that he has written something like 80,000 clues for his Observer puzzles that is quite a challenge, and perhaps results in the odd clue which isn't quite up to his normal standard.