Ed Sheeran bonded with Robbie Williams over their addiction fights: ‘It made me feel less isolated’

31 March 2023

Ed Sheeran bonded with Robbie Williams over their addiction battles.

Ed Sheeran bonded with Robbie Williams over their addiction battles

The 32-year-old singer, who recently admitted to drinking too much and dabbling in drugs until it gave him “bad vibes”, said speaking to former Take That star Robbie, 49, made him feel less alone as he fought to get his life on track.

He said during an upcoming appearance on ‘The Jonathan Ross Show’: “I watched Robbie Williams, he did a documentary, I remember watching it on TV and his rise to fame – obviously he was in Take That – but his solo career, I felt, was quite similar to me, in terms of trajectory and the venues he was doing and what the albums were doing and how big it got and how isolated it got, and how he had a problem with his weight, he had a problem with drugs, he had a problem with alcohol.

“I was watching this thing being like, ‘Oh man he’s gone through exactly what I’ve just gone through.’

“I emailed him and said, ‘Your documentary made me feel less isolated.’ And he was like, ‘Ironically that email just made me feel less isolated.’

“It’s just good to talk about things.”

Ed added he channelled his grief over the death of his best friend Jamal Edwards – who died in February 2022 aged 31 after a cardiac arrest brought on by cocaine and alcohol – into his new album ‘Subtract’.

He said: “I had a load of stuff happen at the beginning of last year… I made another album over the course of a decade, but then some stuff happened to me at the beginning of last year and I wrote this while that was happening and put the other one to the side. It’s kind of happened in a backwards way.”

Ed also thanked Sir Elton John, 76, for his friendship, adding about the singer – who battled drink and drug addictions at the peak of his fame before getting clean: “He’s done everything, good and bad. He’s someone with a wealth of experience. He normalises these things. I find Elton a fantastic person and I’m honoured to be in his sphere.”

Ed told Rolling Stone he quit drinking liquor for the sake of his wife Cherry Seaborn, 30, and their kids as he hated the idea of being drunk around their children Lyra, two and 10 month old Jupiter.

He told the magazine: “I was always a drinker. I didn’t touch any sort of like, drug, until I was 24… I remember just being at a festival and being like, "Well, if all of my friends do it, it can’t be that bad.

“And then sort of dabbling. And then it just turns into a habit that you do once a week and then once a day and then, like, twice a day and then, like, without booze. It just became bad vibes.”

‘The Jonathan Ross Show’ will be shown on Saturday, April 1 at 9.40pm on ITV1 and ITVX.