I will comment on roots when I'm a little more sober, but as for treating clues like jokes I saw in the Times cryptic no.27493 the following;
NI area's yen to enter TV game show (6,4).
It reminded me of Jimmy Carr introducing David O'Doherty on 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown:
"David has never been on Countdown, but he has been on the Irish version, County Down".
I thought it was cute.