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Eagle, I agree entirely.

Yes, I still have a lot of gaps in the NE corner, and the help offered for 6D hasn't helped me.

eagle & nicoladawn: I'm very much on your side. 6d may require a bit of imagination, but not enough of a stretch to whinge about it. It always surprises me that there are several people who take their inability to solve a crossword as a personal slight by the setter.

Helen, 6D is something of a newish colloquialism. A 2 ltr word for writer/setter, 3 ltrs for someone who's funny, 3 ltrs for to cover someone or besmirch them, then 1,1,1 for dirty old men in intros.
Definition is last two words of clue.

I think the main problem I had with 6d was the definition, needed the word 'of', unless that's implied with cryptic punctuation?

Any road I'm stuck on a few, can't seem to get into the setter's headspace. Any pointers on 3 or 5 would be appreciated.

3 - think punctation
5 - not a bird but a performer

Came back to it after lunch and finished off that NE corner. Didn't help that I had 8D upsidedown and the wrong Swift in mind for 5D.

CoD is 19A for me although 23A ran it close.

Many thanks Delaberi. I never refer to 3 using the second word, usually the first suffices.

On 5, I could only think of a Chelsea flower show presenter for a while. (generation gap). After that I think that 16 should be two words - no doubt many disagree.

Completed now, thanks all.