The news of Ed Sheeran’s accolade in the latest honours list has been greeted by mixed reactions.
His fans have welcomed the news, but their grandparents have asked,
“Who’s he then and what does he do?”
One person, however, was reported to be almost apoplectic with rage at the news. James Blunt, on hearing the announcement, was alleged to have screamed at his computer,
“Who? What? The jammy little ginger-haired twerp!” – or words to that effect.
“If he’s got the MBE,” he told the Rochdale Herald when he had (partially) calmed down, “then I deserve a fucking knighthood.”
When asked to elaborate he was quick to do so.
“For starters, I was in the army before I started making music – what does he know about combat, eh?”
When I pointed out that being ginger, Mr Sheeran would doubtless have learned basic self-defence without any help, Blunt conceded that point but was quick to raise others.
“I was everyone’s favourite love-to-hate nonentity singer long before this upstart came on the scene,” he said. “Look at my contribution to apathy – people were so passionately apathetic about me that it’s a contradiction in terms!”
I couldn’t argue with that. Passionately apathetic is possibly the biggest oxymoron in the English language. But Mr Blunt, 43, was still not finished.
“It’s bad enough being replaced as everyone’s favourite rhyming slang by Jeremy Hunt,” he went on, “but to be supplanted for my music as well, it’s outrageous. Who’s going to remember Ed Sheeran in ten years? And what rhymes with Sheeran anyway?”
In his defence, he did make some good points in that rant, but that question is something of a queer’un, as was agreed by my colleague Kieran.
As for the knighthood, well, that’s probably overdoing it a bit, but I’m sure an online petition to get him an OBE would get a few signatures. Half-assed, of course.
