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Academic entertains a heartless address by Deep Purple? (6)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

damson

I'm a little stuck... Click here to teach me more about this clue!

'deep purple?' is the definition.
'damson' can be an answer for 'purple?' (thesaurus). I'm not certain of the 'deep' bit.

'academic entertains a heartless address' is the wordplay.
'academic' becomes 'don' (I've seen this before).
'entertains' is an insertion indicator.
'heartless address' becomes 'ms' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'a'+'ms'='ams'
'don' placed around 'ams' is 'DAMSON'.

'by' is the link.

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for damson that I've seen before include "Plum-coloured" , "Small fruit for nomads" , "Type of plum" , "Sort of plum" , "Small tart plum" .)

I've seen this clue in the Irish Times and the Irish Times (Crosaire).
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