SHEERAN IS A BOOZE LEGEND

ED Sheeran’s first protégé Jamie Lawson reckons his boss could be the next Keith Richards.

The Wasn’t Expecting That hitmaker says he’s never met anyone who can handle the booze as well as Ed and he can never keep up.

The 41-year-old, signed to Ed’s Gingerbread Man records, told me: “We have been out a few times and he is able to put them back, it’s actually quite incredible, he does like a beer.

“We went out after he played the Royal Albert Hall, that was a good night out and it’s great just to catch up and say well done for everything he’s achieved.”

“I don’t have the same drinking skills, but I’m a bit older so maybe that’s why.”

And Ed will vouch for that too, speaking on Tea With Jamie And Ed, he revealed: “The first tour I took Jamie on was Australia and I said if we get your song to No1 by the end of the tour I have to get you smashed and you have to dance on the table and everyone was like: ‘That’s never going to happen’. By the end of the tour it did, he was on a table...”

The pair collaborated with Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid for Jamie’s new single Can’t See Straight, which seems like a fitting title given Ed’s “skills”.

Jamie keeps his millionaire boss’s feet on the ground by taking him to greasy spoons.

Strange

He laughed: “I took him to this cafe in Bermondsey, which was really weird, I don’t think he’s been to a cafe like that in a while, but he loved it.

“It was strange as I don’t think anybody even recognised him!”

Jamie got married last Christmas, and his forthcoming album Happy Accidents, out on September 29, is a sweet nod to how he met his now wife.

He explained: “She was going to see a stand-up comedy show and walked into the wrong room and I was playing. She sent me a message saying I wasn’t very funny but I was pretty good so hooray for happy accidents!”