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Many thanks Prospero

I thought I'd finished then found a couple of mistakes which held me up on the East Side of the grid. All done now.... What a slog but an enjoyable one with loads of PDMs.

Still stuck on 18d despite the earlier hints on this thread.
I have D-T-L-S

Just got it!!

What a wonderfully puzzling puzzle. Thanks so much to the setter!
It took me working on it every day until midnight last night to finish it.
I'm still not sure if some things are correct, but I've submitted it anyway.
I was so pleased each time I managed to figure out any clue that I thought i'd never forget how I did it, so I didn't bother to write down what I thought the clues were. By the time I went to submit, I realised I couldn't remember how I'd arrived at some of the solutions--so I spent some time trying to re-solve--not entirely successfully.
Now I've read through the forum to see if anything I did resembles anything anyone else did...
The last two I just couldn't get were 2 and 3 down. On 2, I was stuck on looking for either an opera or a fruit which had something to do with lingerée.
On 3, my final fill, I couldn't figure out what the defining first word was--which is ironic!
The first two I filled were the charming meta-clues at 14 and 28 across, which inspired me to keep plugging away at it.
It took ages to realise the second word of 15D wasn't "said".
10A and 23D are two of the ones I'm not sure about.
Cryptic solving always requires some degree of struggling with one's presumptions and fixations, but I've never encountered this bonkers amount of it before--and I ain't young. It felt like a treatment designed to try to cure OCD!
Such fun!

Yes, dove - it made a nice change from the usual, and I agree with your 'treatment for OCD' idea (I just wonder what nasty thing it's left in its place!). It's as devious a puzzle as anything I've seen.
I'm not sure you're asking for tips, if you've read through this you've probably found what you were looking for. but I'll throw in a couple of things, just in case (apologies if that's not what you had in mind).

The 'opera' is really a very big thing you'll see at the seaside.

You've obviously got the defining word, otherwise you wouldn't see the irony.

22 what looks to be a one word definition at the front is the anagram indicator - the definition is what looks like a four word anagram indicator on the end (I'm sure you've got the anagram 'fodder).

23 is a sly one - check the Chambers entry for 'heck' (not in the 'darn it' sense). It's a play on words using a common suffix for 'little'.

...sorry, dove - 22 not required!
10ac - I'm sure you've got the 'correct' mark! Then it's 2 words allowing us to empty the 4 letter word.

Indeed I empathise with you, dove. Having started this thread and submitted within 24 hours, I've now come to France and left the grid behind and can't remember anything about it ...! Why we spend so much time on so much nonsense is a mystery - maybe because it's there ... or maybe it staves off the Alzheimers. Either way, it's good to have a puzzle that can't be solved with reference to any outside agency.

Yes, the first part of 23D was the one clue where I did some outside-my-head research to try to confirm the first part of the clue...and learnt a new thing.
2D was funny when I finally got it, because I do like to be beside the seaside, where both answers are found. I once saw a fascinating documentary about the history of the blck stn which is famously found in a place beside the seaside, which has prs.
As Prospero said...not much use for outside agency.
With most puzzles, you can imagine many other solvers coming to the solutions by methods which, somewhere along the solving continuum, begin to resemble each other--at least near the end of the process.
This one was such an internal struggle, which also left me wondering what sort of mental convolutions other solvers must have gone through to reach a penny-drop.
A perfect example of this for me is that the same personal thing in my case caused me to be able to solve the first one I solved at 14A immediately, and prevented me being able to figure out 3D until the end. I'm a professional musician--and the fact at 14A is just one of those oddball facts which lots of musos know. Whereas the answer itself at 2D is the very thing which made it very difficult to see nttn as anthing other than what a musician might see it as--well past the point when I knew I should be opening my mind to other possibilities. Hence, not only irony, but a sort of double irony!

Now the dust has settled and the deadline passed, just clearing up 26a:

It was ‘Game for the auditor to support one peach’. That was actually one of the few that was edited before it went in; it was ‘support a whistleblower’ before, but Hugh pointed out that RATs tend to be telling when they shouldn’t be, and whistleblowers when they should be. The clue works ok; the homophone is just for BACK and then ‘A RAT’ is straight; it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t sound the same.

I've put a few more comments on fifteen squared; happy to answer any more questions here. Hope I didn't cause you too much distres. H/S