With King attending, smash hit Chess and Evita close (5,2,7)
I believe the answer is:
thick as thieves
'close' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'with king attending smash hit chess and evita' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'king' could be 'k' (abbreviation for king in chess) and 'k' is located in the answer.
an anagram of 'hit' is 'thi' which is present in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for thick as thieves that I've seen is " Friendly".)