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I came here to get a hint on my LOI, 25a and finally that penny dropped so thanks. For the parse my working assumption is now that the “to ‘ear from ‘Arry” part as a whole phrase is the device indicator… does that make sense to others?

Very late here as I’m still in France and had to look at this at odd moments between eating, drinking and walking. And it was certainly tough, but I think I’ve got there and enjoyed the challenge.
Brendan - re 25, I think Enigmatist is thinking of two examples, the first of which was a newspaper editor. I think your parsing doesn’t work, both because Eliot only has one R, as you’ve said, and also because it doesn’t begin with an H.

Jono @57, I'm sure you are correct. I was too tired to think about it last night.

Am I the only one who buys the paper! An excellent bank holiday jumbo from Maskarade , the master.

Hi Rog, I get it doesn't begin with an H but I'd assumed that by using 'arry and 'ear he was suggesting we drop a letter, possibly an H as if it's cockney, which leaves a homophone of the answer although, admittedly, that still leaves one of the As that needs to be removed.

Anyway, I'm happy I've got the right answer and I'll leave it at that.

Still struggling on a couple here:

I don't understand the parsing of 8a; assuming I have the answer right

15a is baffling me. I have the first word but where does the monkey come in?

15 parses as [1 inside 3], 3 where the first 3 is 'monkey'

Brendan,
I’m not sure about the homophone aspect of your reasoning. As I see it both ‘Arry and Eliot lead separately to the solution by examples, one as the obvious male Christian name and the other as the pseudo… (trying not to spoil here).

dhope - I would have bought the paper if only I’d not been in deepest France. On your recommendation I will try to persuade a friend to scan Maskarade over to me.

Thanks geeker. I had the wrong ininitial letter for the otherwise correct 16d. Which makes more sense of the wordplay of course. Cyrillic is not my forte.