Chris

@John As a Brit, I had no problem with PYLONS being the structures carrying electrical power across the county. But the "wire" in the clue made me pause - I wouldn't call the massive cables on pylons "wires". To me, an electrical connector stops being a wire once it's 10mm (say, 1/2 inch) thick.

@Francis A "Cut and Shut" we call them in the UK.

@Ham According to Wordlebot, today 4.8% of solvers were correct BY the second guess (so includes those that were correct on their first guess). I don't think I've ever seen an occasion when 50% of solvers were correct by the second guess.

@Strudel Dad as a Brit, I've always pronounced GNU as G-NU (à la Noel Coward).

@SBK On the Nintendo WII system a MII ("me") is the name for the customisable representation of yourself in the various games.

@Puzzled Brit Plus one for not having heard of PANLOAF! My first instinct was "bloomer", but once I'd got "LOAF" I just had to wait for the crosses...

@Andrzej I'm with you - the clue for 57A says "...a hint to reading three Down answers...". One only needs help reading the down answers if the rebus is just what is in the across answer - then you mentally square the circled number as you read it. Though, strictly, the "ONE" slightly spoils the effect since it doesn't need to be squared to make sense reading down.

@Wade H I was quite advanced in life before I realised that the washing-up liquid was actually "SQEZY". Until then I guess I hadn't really looked at any bottles closely and just assumed the correct spelling!

@SBK I believe it was Homer (Simpson, that is).

@Anonymous I guess your annoyance has meant that you didn't check your posts before hitting "submit". Surely the correct answers are ONE, TWO and THREE - not the two different collections you've got in your two posts.

@Alan I would say that the three are (L-R) Dickie Bird, Bamber Gascoigne and David Coleman. I'd guess that the photo was to promote a cricket- themed quiz and was probably taken for the Radio Times. Google doesn't throw up anything directly linking those names, so it's all just a guess!

@Chris No, not David Coleman, I think it's Geoff Boycott. That would make it a Lancashire v Yorkshire ("War of the Roses") competition - much more likely!

@Chris Sorry, ignore me, Dickie Bird was Yorkshire too!