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Typo in the preamble, "7A" should be "27A".

I fear the punchline to the (terrible) joke will be lost on non-US solvers.

You're right, Buddy, but thanks for the puzzle

Yep, whoosh!

42 a cranky clue too, but thanks Buddy!

Yeah, this must have been bewildering for you guys over there. Some nifty clues though.

I never worked out how 42d worked. I assume it ends in A for the hilarious joke to have full effect

Good one, quisling. I had a Y, which obscured the punch line. I'd set the puzzle aside in confusion until noticing your post.
Which is to say that I don't fully get 42d.

I too began with a Y, geeker, but reasoned that would have to be two words. I confess I don’t spend too long on transatlantic puzzles where my lack of knowledge is so easily exposed

a BEMA is a sanctuary, and it's a play on the song Be Our Guest from Beauty and the Beast. So it's a wretched homophone, which I suppose goes part way towards making up for all the wretched Brit-speak homophones we've dealt with over the years.

Thanks Buddy. The reference was way over my head, even if I had the answer. I’ll make a deal. If you campaign to stop your countrymen verbalising every noun, (podiuming, efforting, transitioning et all), I’ll campaign to reduce the number of homophones.

Yes, 42d is a terrible homophone.

One of the worst “transitionings” of American English is the identical pronunciation of nouns and verbs. It used to be, say, COMbat and comBAT, INcrease and inCREASE, ANnex and anNEX, but now they’re all pronounced like nouns.