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A rare appearance in the Prize slot for Imogen, and I struggled at first to get on the wavelength. Great variety of clues. FOI 24d after scratching around the top half in vain for a way in. LOI 16a, which can (I think) only be one thing, but I remain unconvinced by the parsing. Instead of nominating a COD, I’m going to say that I enjoyed the conjunction of 1d and 17d.

Many thanks to Imogen.
I found this delightful. Felt like a struggle and even feared DNF for a while, but total solving time wound up at about the median level, maybe a couple of minutes below.
FOI 24, LOI 17.
Too many COD candidates to list, fine effort by Imogen. 18 got the biggest smile, so that's COD.

Haven't yet searched for theme, Nina, etc.

If I hadn't lucked out with the long clues, by writing in 20 and figuring out the "tropical land" in 12, it would have been a long and difficult ordeal.

Same for me with 20, geeker, but I’m afraid I also wrote in 12 from some crossers and only got the tropical land by reverse engineering. Fine clues both though.

Re 16a, geeker: would you agree that the ‘partner’ bit is rather loose?

I'm extremely permissive regarding clues. 😊 16 confused me and required crossers, but I eventually found "partner's" OK given the apostrophe. The "Papa's" is more questionable IMO, but (recall my questionable taste) I think the clue is rather witty.

rogissimo@1: Nice observation on 1/17. Donovan came to mind. :-)

I found this to be a truly first-rate puzzle by Imogen.

It took a while for me to get going with my FOI being 23a, although I didn't do myself any favours by putting the homophone rather than the answer in 24d! However, once I'd sorted that out, things began slotting in quite nicely.

I can't see any problem with 16a which makes me think I might be missing something?

Way too many COD contenders this week but if someone had a gun to my head I'd probably go for 18d.

I'd always thought that 2d was a term borrowed from our American cousins but, according to Chambers, it's actually theatre slang.

Thanks to Imogen for a stellar Prize crossword.

Brendan, re 2d, you may be thinking of a similar phrase, but with the first word give.

Very enjoyable. Everything fell into place after a gruelling start. 18a also rated as my COD. The solution to 11a contained a word that was unfamiliar.