Ed Sheeran admits the ‘South Park’ episode about red-haired kids 'ruined' his life

'It was worldwide for the rest of my life'
Ed Sheeran
Photo credit Getty Images

South Park has brought a lot of laughs ever since it debuted in 1997. For Ed Sheeran, one episode is responsible for him being the butt of a joke.

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Sheeran took part in an interview with Slam Radio and spoke about how a 2005 episode of South Park “ruined his life.”

The episode, titled “Ginger Kids,” made fun of those with red hair as Eric Cartman likened red-haired children to vampires. “Having red hair in England was always a thing that people took the piss out of you for,” Ed said. “But it was never something in America. People never knew what a ginger was in America.”

After the episode aired, Sheeran said it “f*****g ruined my life.”

“I was going to America and everyone was like ’I love your hair dude.’ And I was like ‘Oh my God, people like my hair?’ And then I remember that episode coming out and that was just it worldwide for the rest of my life.”

Sheeran also made headlines recently when he revealed to TODAY that he almost gave up on his music career following the release of his 2017 record Divide.

The album was bigger than people thought it was gonna be,” he said. “And then suddenly, you come to the end of this thing and you have the biggest streaming song in the world, the most attended tour in the world, the highest grossing tour in the world, the album sold 25 million copies, and then everyone’s kinda looking at you going, ‘Hey, yeah. We’re gonna do that again, but better.’ And I didn’t want that pressure.”

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Ed was tempted to simply throw in the towel on releasing music again, preferring to make and play music for himself instead. “It wasn’t retiring, but it was retiring from giving a f***,” he said. “I wasn’t necessarily wanting to step away from music, but I was definitely wanting to step away from it being a professional hobby.”

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