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I understand your problem, darla. He was a puppet on UK TV in the 80s - obscure, or what?

Ah, thanks Chris! All I could think of was the French hero.

Interesting thing about said puppet. BBC and ITV launched their first breakfast TV offerings at the same time in the '80s in the UK. Despite ITV throwing a lot of money at it the BBC more understated version got all the viewing figures.

Bizarrely, enter said puppet who completely saved the day for ITV.

Interesting thing about said puppet. BBC and ITV launched their first breakfast TV offerings at the same time in the '80s in the UK. Despite ITV throwing a lot of money at it the BBC more understated version got all the viewing figures.

Bizarrely, enter said puppet who completely saved the day for ITV.

I've had a really busy day today with a delightful visit to RHS Rosemoor. I didn't get home until 5.00pm, then got the washing in and did the quick and quick cryptic crosswords. I finally sat down to do the prize cryptic at 6.30pm and got 6 or seven answers on the first read through, then got a block at 10 answers. My husband announced that dinner was ready (he didn't come to Rosemoor) and when I finished eating, I started looking at the thread followed by another brief look at the crossword, but stopped when the new BBC4 serial started. I'll have another go having finished reading the thread, but I doubt I'll finish tonight or even tomorrow. I must look up the puppet.

Started late yesterday and got stuck and frustrated with 21 of course. Finished this morning , thanks to Imogen for a tough workout.FOI 27 LOI 22 COD 17 probably should be 21!
Happy with most of parsing, agree 9 is incorrect , pretty sure my 22 is correct apart from third letter —-knight?

dhope
Chess notation

Thanks Chrise I thought that might be answer.

All done, thanks Brendan.

Penny eventually dropped on 1A, never heard of the French term, and had to check my answer for 26A as it was the first time I'd come across that one.

Well, I finished (agreed, 21a is wicked!) but:
12d was a guess then google then reverse-engineer the parsing;
9a ditto without the google (at first I thought it was breaking the rules, but no);
2d I don't understand the first letter, unless it's an abbrev I'm not aware of;
1a I didn't know the house in the South of France until I googled on the off-chance, so that's a TILT.

Wow. Now it's over I can start to tell myself I enjoyed it.