Ed Sheeran, whose portrait now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, was banned from watching TV as a child

The pop star Ed Sheeran reveals today how he cured his childhood stammer by learning “rude stuff” from an album by Eminem, the American rapper.

Speaking on Desert Island Discs, 26-year-old Sheeran, whose £52m fortune puts him at No 12 in the Young Rich List today, says his uncle brought him the Eminem CD.

“My parents didn’t know the content of the album, and I must have been nine when it came out. And when you’re nine and someone is saying rude stuff, you wanna learn it. So I learnt it, and he raps at such a fast pace that my stammer would go. And that, weirdly enough, was the speech therapy that cured me.

“I then got awarded an award at a ‘stuttering gala’.