Hi Danf
My parsing of 1 doesn’t depend on separating the first two letters of the first word from the rest. But, as indicated in my first post, I’m not happy with it either so I too may be missing something!
Great puzzle this. I think Vlad is one of my setters of choice too.
I'm down to two left. One of which is 20a. I can only think of one word that fits. But it bears no relation to any part of the clue. Unless I'm missing something. Any hints welcome.