Makes a mess of giving a chap a bribe (7)
I believe the answer is:
bungles
'makes' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both acts as well as being plural nouns.
Perhaps you can see an association between them that I can't see?
'a mess of giving a chap a bribe' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'chap' could be 'les' and 'les' is located in the answer.
'bribe' could be 'bung' (I've seen this before) and 'bung' is located in the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for bungles that I've seen is " messes up".)