
Ed Sheeran fans from around the world queue overnight for homecoming concert
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'.
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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.
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As explored in her final two plays, 1998's Crave, and 4.48 Psychosis, Kane had fallen out with the idea of love itself. She wrote Crave under the pseudonym Marie Kelvedon to detach herself from the associations of her name, allowing her to explore a free-flowing poetic narrative through the voices of four characters called C, M, B, and A. The characters mostly exchange single lines, until A bursts into a long monologue about all the little romantic things she wants to do with her lover. The stream of consciousness twists and turns between anger and love in the manner which defines Kane's worldview. Her death and legacy Later, A says, "Death is my lover and he wants to move in". This chimes with the emotions of her final work, 4.48 Psychosis, which explores a state of mind "at 4.48 / when desperation visits". The work comprises 24 sections, without directions or indication of setting, not even of how many actors should perform it. The revival currently running is directed, as it was first time around, by Macdonald, and features the three original actors: Daniel Evans, Jo McInnes, and Madeleine Potter. "It's a play about being a human being," Potter says. "The circumstances might have to do with depression and suicidal despair and psychosis. But the journey is a recognisable, human journey – the search for connection and the longing is universal." Evans reflects that, while Kane took the play form to a different place, "it's almost like we haven't gone beyond that yet – no one has discovered what the next stage is." McInnes adds: "Hopefully this production might have helped inspire new writers to come forward." More like this:• The Shakespeare play that makes audiences faint• Why Requiem for a Dream is still so divisive• Why Gen Z is nostalgia about 'indie sleaze' The Guardian critic Michael Billington dubbed it "a 75-minute suicide note" in his 2000 review. Kane struggled with severe depression and tried to kill herself once before she did so in 1999. But while 4.48 Psychosis might be its artist's cri de coeur, it is as reductive to call it a suicide note as it is to say the same of Sylvia Plath's Ariel poems. After her death, Kane's agent Mel Kenyon said: "I don't think she was depressed, I think it was deeper than that. I think she felt something more like existential despair which is what makes many artists tick." However, in a letter to the Guardian, playwright Anthony Neilson retorted that, "No one in despair 'ticks'", and that, "Truth didn't kill her, lies did: the lies of worthlessness and futility whispered by an afflicted brain." Far more important in terms of Kane's legacy is to focus on the ways in which she played with theatrical form. Reflecting on the power of Kane's work today, Graham Saunders observes that they "respond to #MeToo and issues of coercive control and sexual violence in ways that weren't even recognised or acknowledged when they were first written". Other themes which also come through strongly now include mental health, which is a subject now discussed more openly than when Kane was alive, and body and gender dysmorphia. Imagery recurs in Kane's poetic writing. The emergent flowers in Cleansed recall the end of the first scene of Blasted. Ian and Cate discuss why she came to the hotel with him, ending with him saying, "I love you", and her saying, "I don't love you". Ian picks up a bouquet of flowers and holds them out to Cate. At the start of the second scene the flowers are ripped apart and scattered around the room. Love and beauty have never been shown to be more fragile than in the fraught theatre of Sarah Kane. 4.48 Psychosis is at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 27 July; Cleansed is at London's Almeida Theatre from 21 July until 22 August 2026. * Details of organisations offering information and support for anyone affected by mental health issues and sexual abuse or violence are available at -- For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.