Star singer Sheeran tells how he lost himself

ED SHEERAN has said he “lost himself ” earlier in his career and revealed his cousin threatened to quit working on his tour if he did not rein in his wild lifestyle.

The Yorkshire-born chart-topping star, whose album ÷ (Divide) has spent a ninth week at number one, has frequently used his autobiographical music to sing about drinking and drug use. He told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs he initially found it difficult to be alone in the spotlight, saying: “Before you get into it (fame) everyone warns you, ‘This will happen, this will happen’. It’s like having a checklist in front of you when things happen.”

He continued: “I don’t think I did deal very well with it. It’s a weird thing, playing a venue like Wembley Stadium with 87,000 people and walking off to sit in a dressing room with nothing but an air conditioning sound, you don’t really know how to come down from there. At Wembley I had my friends and family but on tour I will admit I did lose myself for a bit. You can’t really not go mental in that setting but I quickly realised my school mates had always been the constant thread of sanity.”

Asked about losing himself, he said: “All of the checkpoints that are on the list. But I have about 12 really close school mates that have been in the same group since we were about 11 and that has been a constant thread of sanity so now I employ four of them to work on my tour.”