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Welcome to the Forum Warden, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Hi, all. Enjoying the comments, esp re 3D - I only now fully get it – doesn’t help that all the letters of one of the clue’s words are in the answer!
Thought 18A was great, and 10A, too.
7D was LOI – entertaining if not quite accurate.
And ChrisE – my take is that, in 25A, the S is a little (bit of) shrine and, in 8D, the second S comes from Silliness & the third is part of the two letter vacuous ScenE.
Till next week. . . .

BarryC @34
Yes, It's "little shrine" and "touch of silliness" that I'm objecting to!

Ah. Sorry, Chris

As you see, I knew you were going to say that! (Actually, I'd forgotten what your post number was...)

Enjoyable mostly. My FOI was, amazingly, 9d, followed quickly by 4d cause I knew it had to rhyme. COD was 23a.

Stuck on two: 5a and 7d. (Hate spoonerisms). 5a I have ?r???s

7d ??o?e ?n?

Thanks!

Hi Catcharmer,

5a - 2 letters for "holy man" + 4 letters for "righteous" all reversed/"flips" - definition is "goes bananas"

7d - I always find it difficult to describe Spoonerisms but the definition is "radio programming" (every other radio show is one of these!!)

Thanks Brendan. Clever, both.

Thanks for the hints which helped me a great deal today - especially the Enid Blyton one. Putting the letters from the crossers in a solver might have nailed it I guess, but for me that is a last resort (despite the fact that this forum which I love is on a solver website...)

14a made me smile, as did 17d.

As per usual I forgot that the Everyman convention is to have long rhyming pairs - might have saved a bit of head-scratching. .

Crosswords are such a fun way to spend time during lockdown. I’m glad the internet provides a portal to British cryptic crosswords because I am living in the US at the moment, where they don’t seem to exist.

femmenoire,
British cryptic crosswords exist in the USA, but they're extremely scarce and I don't know whether they're available online. Harper's Magazine has a monthly puzzle; there always seems to be a related thread on this forum. The New York Times Sunday Magazine occasionally has cryptics, but I don't know how regularly. The Harper's cryptics seem excellent, the NYT's (as I recall, I don't subscribe) are better than I expected but not outstanding