Ed Sheeran

Nice one. This is the, second award that I've ever got in America, so that's quite nice. Woo! I didn't, I didn't actually know I was getting an award tonight, 'cause I didn't expect one. I was, I was coming here to support the cause.

I got an email from Emily about three months ago telling me about the thing, and I said, "Of course I'll turn up." so turning up today and saying you're getting an award is, pretty wild, but yeah. I was a very weird child.

Very weird child. And I had a, I had a port-wine stain birthmark on my face that I got lasered off when I was very young, and one day they forgot to put the anesthetic on, and then ever since then I had a stutter. And I also had very big blue NHS glasses. NHS is the National Health Service.

One day I hope you'll have the same. Just saying. And I lacked an eardrum on one side of my face, so to, one side of, my ear. So, stuttering was actually the least of my problems when I went to school.

But it was still, it was still quite a, still quite a difficult thing, and the thing that I found, most difficult about it was knowing what to say but not really being able to express it in the right way. So I did different speech therapies and stuff, which wasn't very successful.

I had, homeopathy, which is like herbs and shit where you drinkin' and drink and. It's, it's all right. But I got, I got heavily into music, at a young age, and got very into rap music.

Eminem was the first album that my dad bought me. I remember my, Uncle Jim, told my dad that Eminem was the next Bob Dylan when I was, Say what you want, it's pretty similar.

But it's all just all storytelling. So my dad bought me, The Marshall Mathers LP when I was nine years old, not knowing what was on it, and let me listen to it, and I learned every word of it back to front by the age I was 10.

And he raps very fast and very melodically and very percussively, and it helped me get rid of the stutter, and then from there I just kinda carried on and did some music, and now I'm here.

But it's, I think, I think the one, the one thing I wanted to convey in my speech today for, not so much the adults here, 'cause I feel like the adults are fine. You're all, you're all sorted. Everyone here's got a lot of money and everyone's chilling.

But more the, more the kids that are, that are here that are going through the therapy, and I wanna stress the point that it's not stuttering is not, is not a thing you have to be worried about at all, and even if you have quirks and weirdness, you shouldn't be worried about that.

I think the the people that I went to school with that were the most normal and were the coolest when we grew up, like I was telling Emily earlier that, one of the cool kids from school now does my plumbing, so that's That's a fact. That's a fact. So, being, Sorry.

My thing that I wanted to stress most tonight is not, is not necessarily to to shed light on stuttering or make it, or make it a thing, is to just, stress to kids in general is to just be yourself 'cause there's no one in the world that can be a better you than you and if you try to be the cool kid from class you'll end up being very boring and doing plumbing for someone that you don't really want to do plumbing for.

And yeah, it's just be be yourself, embrace your quirks. Being weird is a, it, is, is a wonderful thing. And it has led for so many creative people, and not even just creative people, like you own a fucking football team now.

That's pretty cool. But I think, you know, just, I'm not very good at speeches. I don't do a lot of speeches, but I think the one thing that I wanna say is be yourself, embrace your quirks, embrace your weirdness, and from a, from a stuttering point of view, don't, don't treat it as an issue.

You know, work through it, and get the treatment that you want to get, but don't, don't ever treat it as an issue and don't see it as a plight on your life. And carry on pushing forward. And I did all right.

You can do all right as well. Emily did all right. Nice one. Thank you.

Thanks. Thanks.