Fairly standard daily fare, a sprinkling of anagrams, a few stretched definitions for me, but I’ve learnt that it’s risky to cast such aspersions without a dictionary.  Theme? Well, there was a band called the Wolfe Tones, and another called the Chillum Brothers… then there’s Maxi/ Judas Priest according to taste.  Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

 ACROSS:

1. PRIES T.

4. (hig)HER MES(senger). Nice hidden.

10. FIR(STAID)ER. Never heard ‘firer’ used to mean arsonist, but guess it can be.

12. HO(NEST)LY. Gang as in ‘a nest of criminals’.

13. LOO(NINES)S. I’d say looniness was more about madness than stupidity, but perhaps the dictionary says otherwise.

15. NO(A)H. Ref. Japanese Noh theatre.

17. BRASS(ER)IE. A brassie’s a kind of golf club, though I’ve only wielded one on a crossword grid. 

21. LI(GAME)NT.

22. IN TACT. In = batting, though I don’t think out = fielding.

24. AL PEN STOCK. That’d be Alabama State Pen then.

DOWN.

1. PI(MEN)T O. Another word for a pepper, or capsicum.

3. SAFFRON. FOR FANS*. I haven’t seen fashionable used as an anagrind before. Seems questionable at first sight, but I suppose ‘pliable’ or ‘malleable’ are not dissimilar.

6. MAIDS TONE. Wolfe Tone, 18th century Irish nationalist.

8. O(R CHEST)RATION.

14. NEW(SAGE)NT.

16. CH(ILL)UM. I’m sure I used to smoke something in one of these now and then, but it’s all a bit of a haze now. 

19. IN C LINE. Does this mean prejudice?

Easier-than-usual puzzle from Virgilius but with another clever bit of grid trickery - every down clue (except 9D, which reveals the theme) is a reversal of its (180 degree) symmetrical opposite . Of course, once you’ve twigged this it makes the puzzle very easy as you only really have to solve half the down clues.