Cryptic crossword No 2,271

What an utterly fabulous long anagram, absolutely the star here! I saw the clue, thought 'Crikey, that's a very long one' (now, now, settle down), but it brought to mind the theme very quickly, and the rest just flew in from there.

Golly, you beat me on quite a few, and several I found the answer without really parsing. And I'm in awe of that super long one - how long does something like that take to construct? Which is all to say: I had fun, even though I didn't totally succeed! Spoilery musings below ..

Echoing everyone else the anagram is nuts and so cool. Spoilers:

Great crossword, but beaten by the phrase. Thanks.

That anagram deserves a place in the Crossword Hall Of Fame 👏👏👏

I think it's fair to say that huge anagrams are a bit Marmite - my first effort on here included a 39-letter one, which a few people liked and several loathed. If you can see them, great; if not, as a solver you are stuck. I wasn't familiar with the phrase but I think you play very fair with your solver by avoiding unfamiliar words and cluing pretty clearly. The long anagram is incredibly clever, but it's probably not something to make a habit of.