I concur with a REEL which is suitably distant from rock music to be cryptic. Liked the disguise of brigand as a double def. For me, top left and bottom left were first then bottom right fell into place, then struggled to get a start on the top right. Used help then popinjay jumped out at me. Not a word I’ve ever used, but I’ve come across it in contexts hard to decipher (used to think it might be someone who flitted about) then mainly in crosswords.

Generally, for a Brit suitably versed in popular culture and vernacular (e.g. scrubber, Brillo, chipper, simpatico), though, the difficulty was in the cryptic solving and oblique definitions not through a great deal of obscurity in vocabulary, which is something I often like about Mr Halpern’s crosswords.

I solved the NW , for the first time ever getting a Spoonerism but elsewhere only had the odd one here and there.

I don’t think I would ever have got popinjay, palisade, hibiscus.

Disappointed not to have got oxide, boob and carpal

As a non-Brit I wasn’t familiar with CHIPPER meaning ‘happy’, SCRUBBER in relation to ‘easy’, SAUCE meaning ‘lip’ and the word POPINJAY, for example.
But one’s never too old to learn.

I needed the blog to understand OXIDE [should've found that myself, though], MISTRUST [ didn't see why 'rotter' had 'the' in front of it] and the STE bit of STEP UP, which I think was rather clever.

First I thought “BRIGAND is a mistake”, taking it as a dd here [brigand's not a ship but a brigantine is] only to realise much later that with = and.
I should have known better, because Mudd hardly makes mistakes.

I enjoyed this crossword, although we could have done with less reversals (there were 5 of them: SINUS, FLOG, STEW, BALSA and BOOB). And I wasn’t very keen on REEL too [it's all right, but it reminds me of "A-reelin' and a-rockin'" which separates the two, if you see what I mean (and if not, well, it's fine too - no big discussions today )].

My Clue of the Day would probably be WEEPING (4d), but I liked the surfaces of 9ac and 6d, too.

The top left corner was the last for me, too. [I'm not too keen on the definition 'it's light' for 3dn.]

Desperate Dan is a character from the Dandy comic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desperate_Dan

I had REEL for 20dn but I’m not making out a case for it!

Re Brillo: Mr Halpern seems to be going in for brand names these days: as Paul in the Guardian, he gave us Smarties on Tuesday.