Ed Sheeran, the chart-topping musician and part-owner of Ipswich Town, has issued a surprising challenge to rival football fans: come up with more creative insults.
The 34-year-old, a prominent supporter and sponsor of the Premier League club currently battling relegation, admitted he finds the existing chants directed at him lacking in comedic value.
Speaking on the Men In Blazers podcast, Sheeran expressed his desire for more imaginative taunts. "The chants haven't been funny enough," he stated. "I need better chants when we go away."
“I see so much thought and preparation go into some of the rude chants, and I just feel like I haven’t got the humour.
“We were at Wolves and there was a chant saying ‘Ed Sheeran’s a c***’, and I was like ‘at least have a bit of imagination’.
“You go to Spurs and they’re singing ‘gimme, gimme, gimme a ginger from Sweden’ (to the tune of Abba’s Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! for their midfielder Dejan Kulusevski), and you’re like, someone has put some thought into that, someone has really taken their time, I want that.
“I want someone in the home fans’ pub beforehand being like, ‘lads, we’ve got it, we’ve got something to rip Sheeran apart and it’s this’.
“I want time spent on it.”
The singer has also seen a mural of himself in an Ipswich shirt painted on a wall on Sir Alf Ramsay Way, a street near the Suffolk team’s Portman Road stadium, which he says he thought would have been defaced by now.
He added: “I’ve got to be honest, I’m surprised it hasn’t been defaced by now.
“I feel very loved by the community.”
Sheeran’s side currently sits nine points away from safety in the Premier League relegation zone having won just three league games all season.
The singer began his career in 2004 and has gone on to achieve 14 UK number one singles and eight UK number one albums. He is best known for songs such as Sing, Thinking Out Loud and Shape Of You.
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