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Also a nice 7-part alliterative pattern today which only revealed itself once completed

Enjoyed today's struggled in SE corner COD 5d but enjoyed other candidates cannot compete with the music storytelling my thoughts are on the terrible events in Afghanistan. Sorry to be gloomy but have worked there so it's particularly awful for me.

Like some others found NW a breeze, then slowed dramatically!
Couldn't parse 16d without the hints on here. My vote for COD goes to 24a, which made me smile. Intuited the singer straight off by association, but took ages to work out the significance of Brazil, until the penny finally dropped 😂

jono, tremendous recollection!

Courtesy of Google:

"four H" site:fifteensquared.net

I got 4 hits. Guardian 24,449 (Brendan) and Quiptic 1004 (Carpathian) seem to share this particular grid (spot check of 5d and 8d clue lengths; too late to be thorough); the other 2 don't.

Ah, great work Geeker, thank you! Yes it was the Brendan one, a My Fairy Lady theme, with Henry Higgins (HH) (11a is the clue in question, much discussed at the time) and Eliza Doolittle who famously ‘dropped her aitches’.
Was that really 2008, time flies!

Agreed this seemed an odd mix of really easy & really hard. I'm still unclear of the parsing of first half of 8. Thanks for all the musical references to 5. I'm familiar with BB & The Beat's response to Thatcher's law & order rally cry, but didn't realise the phrase pre-dated the 80's.

Hi Paul, if you look up the first four letters of the answer in Chambers as 1,3 you’ll see it I expect…

8D has still got me mystified, despite Geeker's best efforts to explain it. How on earth can 'Each lecturer' translate into those first 5 letters? Can anyone help?

Excellent today 5a My favourite. Held up as I didn't know ovine. Billy Bragg's New England a favourite!

8d: split the first four letters as 1,3. It is slang for each or apiece.