Sheeran: I got too wild until cousin reined me in

Ed Sheeran has said he “lost himself ” earlier in his career, and that his cousin threatened to stop working on his tour if he did not rein in his wild lifestyle.

The chart-topping star, whose album ÷ has spent nine weeks at No 1, has often used his music to sing about drinking and drug use. He told Kirsty Young on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs that on tour “I did lose myself. You can’t really not go mental in that setting”. When Young asked if someone told him to “stop it with the girls and the drugs and the booze”, Sheeran, 26, replied: “Yeah it was my cousin on the tour who said he was leaving if it didn’t calm down.”