Ed Sheeran fans from around the world have been queuing since the early hours of Friday morning ahead of the singer’s homecoming concert in Ipswich.
The 34-year-old is due to perform three shows at Portman Road, the home of Ipswich Town, the football club he supports and has previously sponsored, from Friday to Sunday, with fans coming from as far away as the US to see the singer.
Hayley Judge, who is from south London and was at the Suffolk venue in the early morning, and claims to be the world’s only female Ed Sheeran tribute act, told BBC Radio Suffolk that she was looking forward to hearing the singer’s new songs which she was “loving”, but added that 2011’s The A Team “never gets old for me”.
She said: “I used to run an open mic, and one of the guys came to the open mic one night, and he played The A Team, and I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s an amazing song’.
“And then that’s how I started following Ed and just started learning his songs and bought a loop station, the little one that Ed used to have. I think the first loop song I ever did was Small Bump all those years ago, and it’s just sort of progressed from there.”
Judge has met Sheeran on three occasions, with the latest coming when she won a competition to join the singer on a pink bus which drove around London to celebrate the release of Azizam earlier this year.
She added: “We spent a good hour-and-a-half just going around London, really intimate gig with him playing on the top deck of the bus, and then afterwards, he came round and just spent like five minutes with everyone on the bus and just chatted.
“That’s when he said, ‘I’ve seen your cover of Azizam, how’s the tribute stuff going?’, and I did say to him on the bus, I said, ‘One day Ed, me and you’ll do a duet’, and he shouted back, ‘Yeah, let’s do it today’, but unfortunately, obviously it was a very busy day, so we didn’t get to do it then.”
Sheeran will be supported by Myles Smith and Tori Kelly for the July 11 show, before Busted and Dylan open on July 12, and James Blunt and Maisie Peters complete the line-up on July 13.
The shows come after he announced his eighth studio album Play would be released in September.
Fan Debbie, who has travelled from Indiana in the US for the concert, told BBC Radio Suffolk: “Actually, I didn’t know who Ed was until 2020, because I had a hearing loss and I didn’t listen to music, and with my hearing aids, Ed got me into music again, so I’m a latecomer.”
Sheeran was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, but moved to Framingham Earl in Suffolk as a child and has owned a minority share in nearby football club Ipswich Town since last year, with the club being relegated from the Premier League at the end of the 2024-2025 season.
He has had 14 UK number one singles and eight UK number one albums, and the singer’s best known songs include The A Team, Lego House, Sing, and Don’t.
On Thursday, the singer launched an exhibition of his Cosmic Carpark Paintings in London’s Heni Gallery.
Gates open for the shows at 4.30pm, with a curfew at 10.30pm.
