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24a Expression of surprise after tv system's lack of colour (6)
?a?l?r so looks like pallor but I can't see why.

25a Interesting, a bishop leads service in west end of Glasgow (9)
Absorbing? I can parse the 'ab' and 'ing' but not the middle 'sorb'.

25d Female gossip penning rubbish over lawyer (8)
Looks like 'attorney' but I can only parse the 'tor' (rubbish over).

pal, tv system + lor!

sorb =service tree

yenta=gossip

Thank yo Buddy, glad I asked, would never have got these, that's three words I haven't heard of.

Re 53ac, the chemist in me bristles when I see dissolving described as melting. Perhaps a point for Pedants United. On the other hand, it did help me to identify the Italian scientist in 28d.
Other reference sources were required to find out/confirm sorb (as above), the flower in 28ac, the Indian dish in 54ac, the band member in 8d and I, too, had never heard of yenta (not in Chambers on-line).

The Times tries to avoid being tied down to one dictionary, such as Chambers, and, when challenged, tend to say enthusiastic things about Collins. This may be not entirely unconnected to the fact that the bundle of books which they send out to Jumbo prize-winners are all HarperCollins publications. Having said that, "yenta" isn't in my Collins (6th edition, 2003), but it is in my Chambers (11th edition, 2008).

Yenta is in Collins on-line dictionary.