Ed Sheeran, Chantry Park, Ipswich. Until Monday. edsheeran.com

It's easy to forget you're witnessing history when watching Ed Sheeran talk to his beloved Suffolk home crowd.

That cheeky smile, the mottled ginger mop, skater t-shirt, he could easily be that struggling singer/songwriter he talks about playing a gig at the Steamboat in Ipswich.

Except this is the guy, on his own I might add, who has beaten U2’s all-time touring record for the most attended and highest-grossing tour of all time.

It officially started in Turin, Italy back in 2017, and ends on Monday, August 26, very appropriately where it all started in his home county of Suffolk.

260 shows in all, an audience of well over 8.5million, and box office receipts, so far, they're still adding them up, of £720million.

Such eye watering sums are hard to comprehend when after all it's just a guy, albeit a ridiculously talented one, playing a guitar with a loop pedal.

I can't imagine any Ed Sheeran concert is a duffer but I suspect we got Ed at his very best at Chantry Park, on home soil, as he sailed effortlessly through his myriad of hits, some of which were made famous by others, Justin Beiber's Love Yourself, for example, which of course Ed wrote.

The night opened with Castle on the Hill. It couldn't have been anything else with the line 'I can't wait to come home' running through it, and then it was hit after hit, before a melodic lull, and then the final third, which Ed gleefully tells us is the sing-a-long part that we've been warming up to for the last hour and a bit.

With glorious visuals and a packed home ground that revelled in being Ed's backing band, singers and dancers, you finally realise what all the fuss is about.

It's those incredibly simple, beautifully composed pop bangers that live in the back of your head months after you first heard them on the radio.

'Oooh, you know all the words,' the wife remarked as I bopped along to Shape of You.

'Yeah, apparently I do,' I replied somewhat surprised.

For all those who saw Richard Curtis and Danny Boyle's Yesterday film with a very enjoyable cameo from Ed, two things jar in that film for me.

Firstly Ed is told to leave the rapping to the brothers. His finale of You Need Me, I Don't Need You I think proves otherwise.

And then there's when Ed says he's Salieri to the lead character's Mozart.

Oh Ed, you will never be forgotten from history.

Neil D'Arcy-Jones