Ed Sheeran brands 'all areas' of London 'sketchy' and 'dangerous'
Ed Sheeran may have had a number one hit with the song Take Me Back To London, but now he’s singing a different tune, declaring the capital “sketchy” and “dangerous”.
The 33-year-old singer-songwriter - who lives on a sprawling £3.75m country estate in Suffolk - reportedly owns 22 properties in London, most of which he rents out, including a pair of flats in Battersea, three apartments in Whitechapel, and two properties in Covent Garden.
Despite his vested interest as a landlord however, he has declared “every area” in London is to be avoided if you don’t want to get robbed.
During a recent conversation with US podcaster Theo Von, the Shape Of You hit-maker was asked: “What's the most dangerous place to be around here?”
Sheeran responded by saying: "Here? I'd say every area of London. Literally, every area is sketchy.
“I think that you cannot be anywhere. It's not like a segregated city. No, I mean the nice areas are sketchy, the bad areas are sketchy, but you just have to not do stupid s***.
“If you wander around with, I dunno, like a Louis Vuitton duffel bag and a 200 grand watch, you are going to get robbed. But just don't do that."
Ed Sheeran has spoken about how he is supporting the arts in the UK (PA Archive)
Elsewhere in the chat, he also launched a scathing attack on the Conservative Party's lack of support for the arts, accusing them of preferring to support bankers over bands, revealing what he is personally doing to try and address the issue.
"I've been doing probably for the last seven years stuff with music in high schools because in my area, so basically in 2017/ 2018, my old music teacher came to me and he was like, 'look, the government that is currently in charge, do not value art at all.. arts, drama, music.' And they cut all the funding for comprehensive high schools,” the multi-Grammy Award winning musician explained.
"So my music teacher came to me and was going, I think they had to share between art, music and drama, like 700 pounds per year for all three subjects. So I started funding that at my local high school. And then you see a massive uptick in kids doing production, kids doing songwriting, kids doing this.
"I built a recording studio there. There's loads of proper instruments that aren't broken and you just see the school getting better at music. So then I started doing that in the county that I'm from. And we've just now changed it to do it nationwide. And I'm now visiting more high schools and places that really need music funding,” he continued.
"And you see what a difference it makes too. Because I'm not an academic person and in the real world I would be viewed as stupid, but I excelled at music and therefore people think that I'm good at something.
Referring to the UK's great history in the arts, he added: "And our country as well, what we are famous for is our art. We're famous for music with The Beatles. We're famous for painting. Damien Hurst. We're famous for movies. You've got Danny Boyle coming out of here, Christopher Nolan.
"And the government is just putting importance on maths and banking and we make arms, but no one is proud that make arms and no one is proud that our banking's really good, but they are proud of our art.
“And so for a government to be like the art doesn't matter, where do you think the art's going to come from? So the next part of my career is getting proper, proper funding and art, music, drama back into schools and actually Ireland do a very good job of it.”
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