Ed Sheeran at The O2

On Saturday night, my daughter and I went to see Ed Sheeran at The O2 in London. On 1st March, Ed Sheeran announced that he would be playing a handful of UK dates in 2023. I assumed they would be in November or something. They were in MARCH. THE SAME MONTH!

To stand any chance of getting tickets, you needed to pre-order the new album, Subtract, out on 5th May. So I pre-ordered the album. On 8th March I got an email with a pre-sale code, telling me tickets would go on sale at 9am the next day. I went running early to make sure I was back in time, but still felt I wouldn’t get tickets. At 9am, the queue opened. At 9.10, I was in! All but the most expensive seated tickets were already gone, but standing tickets were still available. I couldn’t believe we would be going to see Ed Sheeran in only a few days!

My husband was kind enough to drive us to London and it took way longer than it should have done. Whenever we stay over in London we stay at the Premier Inn in Wembley, which is right in the shadow of Wembley Stadium – and a long way from The O2!

Doors were opening at 6.30 for the concert and I was keen to get there then to get through security etc, but we hadn’t had time to eat and my daughter thought we would just be waiting around. So we ate and set off for Wembley Park tube station at 6pm.

I’m claustrophobic and I’d been dreading the tube journey. Wembley Park to North Greenwich  station is almost the entirety of the Jubilee Line. It was OK until four stops away, then it got really crowded and the claustrophobia kicked in. This is why I’d filled my very small bag I was allowed to take into The O2 with a paperback book (probably the only book the security guards saw all night). It was just after 7 when we emerged from the tube station. The tube station was probably the most crowded one I’d ever seen. This is when my daughter realised that we really would need to leave before the end – and almost certainly miss Shape of You and Bad Habits.

We went into The O2 and joined the queue. Then we realised we were at door B and we needed door E. So we followed the signs to door E. When we got there, we realised the queue went nearly all the way back to where we’d came from, so went back and joined it! The very long queue then moved into a proper queuing system. When we thought we’d got to the front of that, it snaked off into a big side room, then back out into the main area.

If you don’t know The O2, you might assume it’s just a concert venue. But it isn’t. It’s a big shopping centre with a concert venue in the middle of it. Eventually we got to the front, where a group of us were escorted through a door by a couple of security staff. Then there were still more queues! It was like Disneyland Paris or Alton Towers. I’ve been to a lot of concerts in my life, but I’ve never known queues like it.

We got into the venue to see support act, Cian Ducrot, play one and a half songs. Luckily this included the one which has been on the radio recently. We were pretty close to the back and couldn’t see the stage at all. We tried moving forward a bit, but the view actually got worse.

 

I’d looked up Ed Sheeran’s set list from Manchester earlier in the week, so I would know when we needed to leave to avoid the crowds on the tubes. Just as the information from Manchester told me, he came on stage at 8.15, to much excitement. But he came straight in with The A Team, not Give Me Love, as it has said on the Manchester set list.

Remarkably, considering he’d only finished the Equals tour Down Under a couple of weeks earlier, he’d managed to pull together a very different show. About the first thing he said was ‘There’s no set list’. He’d literally decided on his set just before going on stage and a lot of the songs were ones he said he hadn’t played for a while.

Ed Sheeran has A LOT of hits, but he didn’t play them all. He only played a couple of songs each from Divide and Equals. My daughter knows every word of every song on Divide, but isn’t very familiar with his earlier songs. She claims not to know Lego House, although to be fair she was only 5 when it came out!

For most of the concert, I could make out a very tiny Ed Sheeran on stage, but I was 99% watching the screens. My daughter, who likes to think she is as tall as me, just couldn’t see him. She didn’t mind though, luckily!

I’m pleased to say that, even though he didn’t play all the hits, he did play my favourites off each album – Lego House (Plus), Photograph (Multiply), Castle on the Hill (Divide) and Overpass Graffiti (Equals).

Ed Sheeran always talks to the audience and encourages everyone to join in. I like to listen to him when he talks as he is always interesting. The women in front of us were obviously huge fans and knew every single word of every single song, including one from The Hobbit film, which I’ve definitely never heard before. Yet while he was talking they were just chatting between themselves and screeching with laughter at their own conversations. It seems a strange thing for fans to do!

During The Hobbit song, he suddenly stopped playing because someone had fainted in the crowd. He asked for some help for them and told people to move a bit and give them space. I have massive respect for that. He then seamlessly moved back into the song, when he knew the person was getting the help they needed. A couple more times he asked between the songs for water to be given to the crowd. I even got some free water myself, right at the back (having earlier paid £3.90 for a bottle!).

The new single, Eyes Closed, was released the day before the concert. I’d listened to it about 10 times on Spotify, so I knew it pretty well when he played it.

Just before 10pm, my daughter and I moved to the other side ready for a swift exit. According to the not very helpful Manchester set list, the last song would be You Need Me, I Don’t Need You, which was the last song when we saw him at Wembley last year. He would almost certainly be playing Shape of You and Bad Habits before that. We contemplated staying for one of the songs, but knowing how awful the tube would be, my daughter said we should just leave before the encore. So we did.

My daughter and I have a special magic power. We can run. So we ran to the station and through the station, overtaking hundreds of people on the way. We got a seat on the tube. It was crowded, but less crowded than the one on the way in. The evening ended with the funniest conversation ever with a drunk couple on the tube.

The O2 wasn’t my favourite venue ever and I wouldn’t be in a hurry to go there again (give me Wembley any day!), but we loved the concert and I’m so glad we got tickets.