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This is just what the doctor ordered, not too heavy and with lots of wit.

FOI was 23a so I did initially think I might struggle but, thankfully, the Everyman usual suspects came to the rescue.

As an East-ender I pretty much despair at the usual hackneyed (see what I did there 😀) clues that require conforming to some dated stereotype, so I was particularly pleased by 15a and its amusing take on the same theme.

By pure coincidence I am currently reading ABC ...... by 17a (that's amazing Bren, tell us more 🥱Zzzzzz).

19a - I couldn't think of any examples where the answer could be swapped for "proceeding" but it is in Chambers thesaurus so that's good enough for moi:-)

I still haven't parsed 1d and 24a so they'll take a bit more investigation but, other than that, I'm home and hosed.

Stay safe:-)

COD - I really like the charade at 26a and the homophone at 3d but the winner is the aforementioned 15a.

Thanks to Everyman for a fun puzzle:-)

Hi Brendan,
I came here for help parsing 1d. I assume its a TLA. 24a is a reversal. You may revise your cod?

For 1d think musically ;-)

Got it Cheers Jono. Everyman's full of wit today.

Strange, I've struggled with the past 4 Everymans. Thanks to Everyman for keeping me from being overconfident...

Still can't parse the first 2 words of 3, though I think the third word is a homophone of a "religious type".

Didn't parse 1d until reading the forum. Had trouble with a few of dd and cd clues, and took a while to parse 24 (complex backward clue).
Didn't take notes on FOI, LOI or COD, but will go with 1d as COD.
I think 2 was FOI and 24 LOI.

That's brilliant Jono, many thanks.

Paul, I still don't see 24a - I assume the first 2 letters are got from "first to attend university" but that's as far as I get. The rest can't be initial letters as there are two words beginning with T but only one in the answer - backwards of forwards.

As usual, immediately upon posting I figured out 3.
Another nice musical clue from Everyman, who was in excellent form save clue 20, which was a bit clumsy IMO.

Brendan, 24 parses as a reversal of [4, 4, 1, 1]. You have the 1s. Quite tricky.

Aahh, got it - thanks Paul.

Yes, thanks Geeker,I just couldn't see it, but all's clear now.