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Ed Sheeran branded the entirety of London as “sketchy” in a recent episode of Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend” podcast — despite the pop star reportedly owning more than 20 properties in the UK capital.
Asked about the most dangerous part of the UK, Sheeran, 33, said: “Here? I’d say every area of London. Literally, every area is sketchy.”
“The nice areas are sketchy, the bad areas are sketchy. But you just have to not do stupid shit,” he told Von. “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,” he added.
According to the website crimerate.co.uk, the crime rate in London over a 12 month-period ending April 2024 was 106 crimes per 1,000 people.
The site says that Hackney in east London is the city’s most dangerous borough based on Crime Risk Scores, which it says are calculated by taking the severity of crimes into account, while the safest borough is Richmond upon Thames in the southwest of the capital.
Sheeran’s apparent reserves about London’s safety haven’t stopped the singer from investing in the city, however.
The MailOnline reported in 2022 that the Grammy-award-winning artist had built up a portfolio of 22 properties in London, including two spots in Covent Garden in the city’s West End.
Nevertheless, Sheeran spends most of his time residing on a 16-acre estate in Suffolk, in the east of England.
The lavish estate reportedly has a barn that Sheeran renovated into a private pub, as well as its own chapel — where the singer even added a crypt.
A representative for Sheeran did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
While Sheeran is now one of the biggest names in music, he started out as a struggling artist who spent some nights sleeping rough in London as he attempted to make it big.
Writing about the early days of his career in his 2014 autobiography, “Ed Sheeran: A Visual Journey,” Sheeran recalled: “There was an arch outside Buckingham Palace that has a heating duct and I spent a couple of nights there. That’s where I wrote the song ‘Homeless’ and the lines ‘It’s not a homeless night for me, I’m just home less than I’d like to be.'”
Per the book, it was while performing at a local homeless shelter that Sheeran met a sex worker and drug addict named Angel, who inspired his debut 2011 single “The A Team.”
The song catapulted Sheeran into the limelight, and he has since gone on to amass a fortune of around £300 million (roughly $384 million), according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2023.
