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Not quite as tricky as I've come to expect from Everyman recently. Last hold-out was vexing me but hit me - as so often happens - as I was writing here for help. Satisfying solve, all parsed. Nice surfaces. Good Sunday morning stuff!

I groaned at the homophone in 11a ;) and am unsure of the word 'heading' being used in 9a, but, apart from those, am happy with all the parsing

@Cerasus
I parsed 9a as 'heading' (initial letter of the synonym for Father Xmas) + 2-letter + 1 letter for 'to' then N(north) at the end ?

Reasonably straightforward. All done bar 12 and 25 which I just can't see. I'd appreciate gentle hints (not solutions) please. Thanks.

jazzgirl, I parsed 9 as the synonym in full with the N at the end.

@simond9x
12a should really be described (1,1,1,1,) not (4) imho.
15 The 'smoker' is a large, well-known European geographical feature.

Thanks, Halloway, got them now.

Thanks simond9x. I tend to overthink sometimes, but we agree on the answer :)

Hi Halloway
I agree re 12a ... and something similar could be said about 4a, I reckon. Meanwhile, isn't 10d a comedy character, not a comic character? Finally, you'd be astonished how close you can get to making 'egotists' fit into 18d if you start off on the wrong track and do some very convoluted parsing!
PS Brendan - hope you're OK.

Thanks jazzgirl. That makes sense in a convoluted kind of way !