ED’S FOUND SOCK-SESS... BUT HIS USED TO STINK

D SHEERAN says he’s gone from a ‘fat ginger boy’ with smelly socks to creating a £220million music empire – all by ‘accident’.

These days he owns his own label, Gingerbread Man Records, and is settling into family life with his wife Cherry and their baby daughter

Lyra Antarctica on their huge Suffolk estate.

And thanking his first hit

The A Team for giving him a new underwear drawer, the 30-year-old said:

‘Looking back at when I wrote it versus where I am now – I had two pairs of socks. I literally never washed my socks and just changed socks.

‘I mean, if you’ve met anyone that knew me back then the one thing that everyone could agree on is my feet stank.’

And he was told that his fame hopes were a stinker, too. ‘Everyone was just like, “If you put on paper, there’s a fat ginger boy that raps with a small guitar, do you want to sign him? F*** no,’ Sheeran said.

Back after a four-year break with his No.1 single Bad Habits, Ed admitted that he could have never predicted he would become one of the biggest artists in the world back when he was couch surfing.

On his rise to superstardom, the Shape Of You singer confessed: ‘Now I have people say to me, “But you must have always known”, and I don’t think I knew.’

He told Oz radio show Smallzy’s Surgery on Nova 96.9: ‘Thinking Out Loud is one of the biggest songs that I’ve put out and that was meant to be a bonus track on the album. There’s so many things that have happened by accident or by chance.

‘It’s been a mad journey, like nothing feels planned or meant to be.

‘It’s just kind of happened and now I’m here.’