The line goes “…’cos I’m a singer that you never wanna see shirtless…” but for one fan that line now has a memory of its own attached to it and she HAS seen the BRIT Award-winning, Grammy Nominated singer shirtless. She even has his shirt from that night and he has hers.

Karen and her daughter had the shirts made up for the night, never once thinking that Ed would ask for one or walk away with it…here is their story as shared by Karen from Missouri.

We live in Missouri. We road tripped to Iowa for this show, it was our 4th Ed show on the Multiply tour. Savannah is 14. Lainey made the shirts based on a 2013 tweet when Ed came to Iowa. Raygun made the group order of shirts and we picked ours up when we got to town for the show on June 9th. After the show we waited (this is something we normally do) and met up with new friends.

At somewhere around midnight or 12:30, Ed came out. There were a LOT of people so they asked for us to all line up along the barrier. There were too many people though, so there were people pushing and 2-3 people deep along the barrier. Savannah is pretty shy and I was concerned because she was having trouble, so I found a man & woman standing along the barrier and asked if my daughter could stand between them. They were happy to have her stand with them. I stood back and at that point was just trying to make sure she didn’t get pushed out of the way again. As Ed came down barrier meeting people at some point he noticed me and started gently motioning people out of the way to point at my shirt (I was behind people). He said he liked it and that he would like one. I said OKAY…LOL…that’s about all I ended up saying the whole encounter because I was so stunned.

Then he asked if I would like to swap shirts and I said OKAY once again. 😉 He looked a little surprised and said “Are you ready?” and I said “Yeah, I’m ready!” and we both took off our shirts and handed them to each other. I actually sort of THREW mine at him because I realized as the shirt was halfway off that I had just taken my shirt off in front of a large number of people who all had their phones out, taking photos!

I was in such shock, I couldn’t really think of anything to say but something about not putting my naked picture on the internet. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that no one cared that I had MY shirt off, only that ED had his off. It was very fast and once the shirt was on, I bent over to pick up my purse that the crowd started pushing their way towards him again. He had moved on to continue taking selfies with people and I was pretty much just stunned. I found Savannah and she was even more stunned than I. In the video you can’t really hear her, but she was standing beside the blond (next to Ed) and she said pretty loudly “MY MOM IS NOT TRADING SHIRTS WITH ED SHEERAN” and Ed turned to her and said “Is that your Mum?” Haha!

I did realize at some point that we hadn’t gotten a photo together, with our switched shirts, but it was too late. I got in line but at that point people were getting back in line and security realized it and off he went to the bus.

It was such an amazing and surreal experience. Needless to say, I wore the shirt for the 5 minutes it took to get back to the hotel and then my daughter promptly confiscated it! She keeps it in a ziplock in her room to preserve the smell of his cologne. 😉

A little over a week later, Ed put two videos on Instagram of himself dancing & wearing the shirt!

First this one:

Followed by this one:

Stunned again, we were really excited because at that point Lainey had already talked to Raygun and they were going to make another batch of the shirts. Part of the proceeds would go to EACH, and I was so excited when he posted on Instagram because I felt like that gave the shirt even more publicity. I also think Ed may have known this and is a complete mastermind.

Here are some pictures that Karen kindly shared with us.

The Shirt that started it all

Karen and Lainey

The Singer…Shirtless

Here is a selection of the photos that were submitted when fans received their shirts.

In case you are wondering here is what Karen and Savannah wear to Ed’s gigs these days

Karen in Ed’s shirt before heading back to the hotel

Savannah in Ed’s shirt, having confiscated it off Karen

When asked her thoughts on having started something that raised $300 for East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices, Karen had this to say:

It was great to be a part of something so fun, have a story to share with my daughter and tell for a lifetime, and also do a little good and give back!

Way to go ladies!