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Well I found that really difficult. All done now. Immense amounts of misdirection (“Romantic”, “Wicked”, “Funny”, anyone?) and ridiculous puns, and I had a fair amount of thesaurus trawling, which wasn’t very cheating but didn’t feel right. I couldn’t explain 18 or 22 either until coming on here, so thanks for that. When you do get to some of the solutions you may actually laugh out loud, which is rare.

Nearly done, just 1a, 4d, and 29,12 holding out. Could I have a hint for the latter, please?

chrise, 29/12: the definition is words 1-4. The rest is a mildly cryptic phrase about a plumber coming over to build your new bathroom.

Chris, 29,12 - the 3rd word is a common synonym for "basin" - that should get you over the line.

Thanks both. I think I must have 3d wrong. SOUSE seemed like a good answer!

Ah - there's a more obvious solution

Finished now - thanks for the help.
LOI 1a - "cherry or chestnut" seems superfluous.

@ Chrise: 1A - four letter word for "man" containing three letter word describing the appearance of the three items at the end of the clue.

4D - The "romantic" references a musical icon containing the usual single-letter "love".

Thanks nodrog - I had just got there.

Finished at last
FOI 7d was wrong and held me up LOI 21d and still cannot quite see how’s it’s parsed. COD 28a 16a 11a which is very clever 4d and 1a also good. I can now see 7d which is also very clever 4d

Enjoy Paul’s crosswords, one of the best compilers imho

rocky@5: 23 is a well-known **** **** (spoiler omitted) Stateside.