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Very enjoyable offering from Paul, more straightforward than usual because no intricate cross-referencing on this occasion.
FOI 14, LOI for some reason 19.
NHO 26 (geeker probably has the advantage over me there), but gettable from the fodder.
COD? I’m going for 17, but won’t say why.

That was a prize puzzle? Oh.

Thanks to Paul. Had fun with this one. Couple of highly amusing Pauline off-colour flourishes. Also enjoyed the relative lack of x-referencing.

FOI 2.

LOI 1a, but that was mainly due to an error in 6 (which was corrected after considerable waste of time) and near error in 1d. Solving time thus came in very slightly over the median.

I was wondering whether 26 is well-known across the pond. Extremely well-known to US boomers (though his main admirers were most likely boomers' fathers), probably not to younger generations.

17 also my COD for reasons already hinted at. The long list included 13, 25, 22, 19d and 13. Plenty to enjoy.

Column 8 and row 8 appear vaguely Nina-like, but I don't recall Paul going for Ninas so I suspect coincidence.

I enjoyed 19d because it nicely employs crypticland's pet British artist. 🤣

Rosa Klebb in FT looks promising for those who finish the Prize quickly.

Thanks to Paul for, what was to me at least, a challenging but fun Prize, with a couple of Paulinesque clues for good measure.

FOI was 2d immediately followed by 4d.

I still haven't fully parsed 6d, where I can see the "near" homophone but, try as I might in a whole host of accents, I can't get the last 4 letters to sound anything like "line worker". If there were 2 specific letters that replaced the last one then yes, it would work - but there isn't?

My only other query is with 23a where, assuming I've parsed it correctly, I'm not sure "painter" is correct, dye or at a stretch 'paint' but not painter - but maybe I've got the wrong city?

COD is 17d. I'm not sure if it's just a coincidence but, in addition to having Paul's particular brand of humour and a lovely surface, it's also very topical:-

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/articles/cx2gr00ndmyo

Ah, just seen 6d - silly me!

Brendan, I share your doubts about 23a.

6d: I think the last four letters parse as (2,2) where the first 2 is a homophone of a 3-letter word for "line" and the latter 2 is a (dodgy) homophone of a 3-letter word for "worker".

Thanks Geeker, our posts crossed but you're exactly right. I was mistakenly parsing as 2 words when I it should have been 3. I got sucked in by the closeness to the line worker being of the mechanical variety.

I got hung up on 6d because I hurriedly wrote in (without parsing) an African city which has the same crossing letters (3, 5, 7) but a different crossing letter 1. Made 1a a lot harder. ;-)