As he ends the world’s most successful tour, a compelling new biography reveals the unlikely beginnings of Ed Sheeran, our £160m king of pop

Even as a little boy Ed picked up words and melodies very quickly. He loved rap music

out with his bright ginger hair and big round glasses.

When Ed was nearly five, the family moved. This time to Framlingham in Suffolk.

Everything about the market town was cosy – a picture postcard of old England, steeped in history. It was compact, easy to get around and surrounded by delightful countryside.

Ed had failed to grow out of his stutter and his parents tried everything – from speech therapy to homeopathic remedies – but nothing seemed to help.

The stutter became more pronounced when he was excited. But interestingly, it didn’t affect him when he was singing in the choir or in his dad’s car.

When Ed was nine, he grew to love rap music. Eminem was at the forefront of its growing popularity. Critics compared the autobiographical lyrics on his 2010 The Marshall Mathers LP to those of Bob Dylan.

Ed had the musical equivalent of photographic memory. He absorbed the songs, including all the bad language: “I learned every word of it, back to front, by the age of 10,” he recalled.

In doing so, he discovered that rap was the best therapy for his speech impediment. Curing his stutter undoubtedly enhanced his confidence, as did an operation to fix a problem with his eardrum.

While Eminem undoubtedly influenced Ed’s approach to lyrics, his love affair with the guitar was triggered by a master.

He had watched Eric Clapton playing Layla at Party At The Palace – the 2002 concert to celebrate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, held in the Buckingham Palace gardens – and was spellbound.

“I was like ‘Wow. That was so cool. I want to play that’,” he recalled.

Two days after watching Clapton, he walked into a pawnbroker’s in Ipswich with £30 in his pocket and came out with a black Fender

aStratocaster copy. moment, Ed spent minute shut inside playing guitar.

BFrom that every spare his bedroom

Y THE time he started at Thomas Mills High School in September 2002, Ed was pretty much a guitar geek. But he wasn’t a loner and made friends easily, especially if they were keen on music, too.

He took his guitar everywhere. A key moment came when he took to the stage and played Layla at a school charity concert. He wasn’t feeling too confident but he discovered that, in front of an audience, he blossomed.

For Christmas 2004, Ed’s main present was a Boss Digital Recording Studio, that he kept in his bedroom.

Then aged 13, he immediately threw himself into recording his first album, Spinning Man. He started work on Boxing Day 2004. By January 19, 24 days later, he had completed 14 songs.

Although he was proud at the time, he now keeps Spinning Man away from the public. It was an amazing achievement, but it’s a rock album that sounds nothing like the Ed Sheeran we know today.

When he recorded his second album, The Orange Room, he got together all the cash he could get his hands on and paid for 1,000 CDs to be produced.

He proudly took them to school and offered them for a fiver. Most of them sat around in boxes at home, where they remained until he became famous.

By then he had to ban his mum from selling either The Orange Room or Spinning Man.

The final key moment in Ed’s early life, a tragic one, came the week before his 15th birthday.

A school friend, Stuart Dines, was among a group of Thomas Mills pupils on a half-term trip to the Austrian ski resort of Fugen.

On the autobahn near Cologne, the double-decker coach he was travelling in got a puncture and had to pull on to the hard shoulder. A lorry careered into the stationary vehicle and 14-year-old Stuart died

Stuart’s father Robert remembers: “Ed was very, very upset, like a lot of the children.”

The boys had spent time at each other’s houses, and it was the first time the young Ed had to come to terms with the death of someone close.

He decided to write a song about his feelings. He composed, he said, “whilst I got round to actually accepting it”.

The song he eventually finished is a breathtakingly beautiful tribute to his friend called We Are.

It was completed in time for Stuart’s funeral at Woodbridge Methodist Church and the recording was played during the service, along with some of Stuart’s favourite Queen records.

Afterwards Ed presented Robert, and Stuart’s mother Jackie, with a copy of the CD. “It is a lovely song,” observes Robert.

When Ed played it later, he would refer to We Are as “the song that actually got me the record deal”.

He included it in a concert at The Bedford pub in Balham, south London, in October 2010. Among the audience were bosses from record label Atlantic, looking for new talent.

They were blown away by the young singer’s emotional rendition of We Are and three months later had signed Ed to a six-album deal.

Ed was about to become The Next Big Thing for real.