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I think Paul is one of the best setter's personally, I think I am on his wavelength more though.

He hasn't been on top form in the Prize recently though I think (although I did liked today, but the 7s were obscure). The NW corner was particularly hard.

2 of his crosswords from the last year or so have been excellent, the one themed around TOOL was a classic (if extremely difficult) and the THANKS one which contained a great deal of Tom Hanks movies.

Chris, I think you have captured my feelings about some of Paul's puzzles. Several of the thematic names in this one were unknown to me.

Ok. Pauly's crossers for 24a were wrong. Brendan, you were confirming his 1a crossers were right. All done. Toodle-pip!

Paul is one of my favorite setters. I read his "Meet the Setter" Guardian blog entry just as I was discovering the Grauniad crosswords. For some reason I've always felt "on his wavelength" and generally do well solving his compositions. And I have a taste for the off-color clues.
Sometimes I feel put off by Paul's heavily linked/cross-referenced grids, but soldier on and wind up enjoying them. Today's was moderately cross-referenced IMO.

Oh dear, sorry Minno. You're right, I was only referring to 1a but I can see that I didn't specify that - glad you got it sorted regardless:-)

Someone else mentioned the "audiobook" 29 was not a favourite and I agree, I too had to study it for O level English and I thought it was terrible, the plot was WAY too telegraphed so I knew exactly what was going to happen after the first part. Not a classic IMHO!

Cor, oh my (both used rather a lot recently!), I finally 'twigged' the parsing of 29A and, thanks to posts here, got 27A to finish it off.

I think the 'hints' given here are pretty fair and not spoilers at all.
Sometimes you have the answer but parsing it is the problem; so I am going to say that 29A was my favourite.

11A I got from the crossers but still don't like it. Am I missing something? Don't recall that this stuff does that thing that might make it a bloomer.

A bloomer is a (probably British) name for a bun/roll/bap/loaf/etc.

Funny, I only now see the "audiobook" parsing of 29. It's worthy of COD consideration. I had parsed it indirectly via the anagram indicator in clue 8. 😳

That's quite a major parsing oversight there lol :D

Still a terrible book though. But a good clue.

I still preferred the pork pie misdirection of 22D (was thinking surely it can't be ?? ???? Sherlock, even for a Paul clue, and I was right about that, would never be allowed not even in the Graun).