Fans of Ed Sheeran have been queuing since the early hours of Friday morning ahead of the singer's homecoming show in Ipswich.
The singer is to play three shows at Ipswich's Portman Road from Friday to Sunday, the club that he supports and has previously sponsored. Fans have been queuing as far as the US to see Sheeran perform on stage.
Hayley Judge, who claims to be the world's only female Ed Sheeran tribute act, is from South London and was one such fan who queued at Portman Road in the early morning.
Speaking to BBC Radio Suffolk, Judge said that she was looking forward to hearing Sheeran's new songs, which she was "loving". However, she added that his 2011 track The A Team "never gets old for me".
"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", Judge said. "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".
Hayley Judge also went onto reveal that she has met Ed Sheeran on three occasions, with the latest coming about after she won a competition to join the singer on a pink bus which drove around London, celebrating the release of his single Azizam from earlier this year.
"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", she said.
"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".
These three shows will see Sheeran's show opened by Tori Kelly and Myles Smith tonight. Saturday's show will be opened up Busted and Dylan, with James Blunt and Maisie Peters completing the line up on Sunday (July 13).
At these shows, Ed Sheeran will be supporting his eighth studio album, Play, which arrives in September.
Last month, Ed Sheeran recently responded to criticism over claiming that he identifies as Irish. More on this here.
