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Well I usually like Paul, but I found this difficult. I have finished it with some help fr0m DanWord, mainly to confirm my guesses where I had trouble parsing the answer. There are a number of answers I still can't fully parse. Though I had no trouble with 11ac. I'd never heard of 8ac. But I knew the opera for 5d

I have had a very busy day and need to get to bed so I won't go into detail here.

FOI 18ac, LOI 16d Because I had the wrong answer for 8d which threw my answer for 26ac. COD none

I showed 6d to my daughter, who hasn't been trying crosswords for very long. She said "it must be IN A HOLE"!

Like others, usually a Paul fan but found this rough going.

Thanks for hints re: 11A, not sure I'd have got that organically.

I'm stuck with only 2D and 8A to go.

2D, assume second word refers to the disgraced politician / author and his title?

8A, have the second word but like roof, I suspect I won't have heard of the answer, whose definition is the last 4 words?

TIA for any help...

me @52
in THE hole, of course


Tommy - not Geoffrey; an archer of myth and legend

Jeffrey - oh for an edit function!

Thanks chrise, will ponder on that one. Seem to be making a habit of getting 2 or 3 clues off a solve in recent weeks!

Tommy
The crook was my first thought (and probably subconsciously made me think of Araucaria’s great clue to which I referred earlier), but as chrise says, the reference is to a legendary archer. The upper case A is a misdirection, and archer is the definition of the whole, not just the second word.
Re 8a:: the definition is the first two words. The last four define the first word. Once you get the crosser from 2d it should fall into place.
Hope this helps!

My love/hate relationship with Paul continues but I have enjoyed some of this , especially his more adult sense of humour much better than the usual Pauline schoolboy jokes.
FOI 6d no problem with it
LOI 4a
COD 1d and 24a clever and funny liked 2d as well clever misdirection.

Thanks chrise and rogerm - all done now!

Kicking myself over 2D, I'd actually considered the synonym for "hard man" but dismissed.

8A, yep - got from the crossers and some GK I didn't know.

Nice to actually finish one off though!

I may be going against the grain but I found this a tiresome exercise. 1d/24a were not funny in my opinion and I can't see any way to explain the first half of the clue or the first word of the answer.

11d i only completed after reading the comments here, having put in a different tentative solution. Def in 1a seemed a bi of a stretch.

21a I grudgingly accept is a clever clue, having entered the right answer for the wrong reasons (jumped for the wrong parrot then grumbled about the rest not making sense. And I still can't see a shark in 12a.

25a, 23d I can't parse. I think the trouble with having too many CDs in a puzzle is : if you, the solver, aren't "on the setter's wavelength" then you're lost.

On the positive side, 4a was nice as was 4d. And I'm old enough to remember 8a (thankfully, without a Pauline twist in the clue).