Thanks.
Didn't know about the cat drop icon thingy. I'm constantly amazed at the cool things you can do with Linux.
looking at the paths now I can see the problem, they point to a specific version. If they pointed to "..../current/...." then they would find an icon. Problem now is when you click the icon I cant seem to get deeper than the (linked) current directory. Perhaps something more fundamental is broken?
Telegram desktop :-
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Telegram Desktop
Comment=Official desktop version of Telegram messaging app
Exec=env BAMF_DESKTOP_FILE_HINT=/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/telegram-desktop_telegramdesktop.desktop /snap/bin/telegram-desktop -- %u
Icon=/snap/telegram-desktop/490/meta/gui/icon.png
Terminal=false
StartupWMClass=TelegramDesktop
Type=Application
Categories=Network;InstantMessaging;Qt;
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/tg;
Keywords=tg;chat;im;messaging;messenger;sms;tdesktop;
Pycharm-community :-
[Desktop Entry]
X-SnapInstanceName=pycharm-community
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=PyCharm Community Edition
Icon=/snap/pycharm-community/123/bin/pycharm.png
Exec=env BAMF_DESKTOP_FILE_HINT=/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/pycharm-community_pycharm-community.desktop /snap/bin/pycharm-community %f
Comment=Python IDE for Professional Developers
Categories=Development;IDE;
Terminal=false
StartupWMClass=jetbrains-pycharm-ce
other broken icons include remina (1.3.4), notepad++ (7.7.1) and a handful of others