Good but extremely tough, the Initials line is gonna stump nearly everyone i'm afraid

SPOONERISMS ARE WRONG RE SPELLNGS

Hey, birdbrain, (not insulting them, that's what they put their name as) you could argue that Jay Hood isn't a spoonerism of Hey Jude because Jude doesn't quite rhyme with Hood (unless you live in Lancashire) but spoonerisms don't require correct spellings. The reason they work as spoonerisms is because you're just swapping around the phonetics of the words.

In what part of Lancashire does Hood rhyme with Jude? Is there a Scottish part of Lancashire?

Outstandingly good - thankyou!

The initials line was the easy one. Hey Jude is not a spoonerism of Jay hood as hood rhymes with Judd.

I got the REM group by selecting people the initials LB

Love it, really fun grid. I say ‘hood’ like ‘jude’ and assumed most people do so I can’t relate to the backlash but what a might fine category! Would probably never noticed even with half an hour. Gerry Vood. Or rather Gerry Vudd lol. Some folks need to chill…

Liked the spoonerism idea. Larry Bird useful red herring but a little plain for type of birds. Initial authors was also very good.

Are you Scottish, jollycorpse? Or from Lancashire?

I'm trying to imagine the accent.

I guess it is more of a Scottish thing than a Lancastrian thing. Lancastrians tend to pronounce book as "buke", but it's only words that end with K. Saying hood like "hude" is Scottish.

Wow, that was tough!

Inventive, but "Hey Jude" does not work in most of the English-speaking world. At all.