ONE man, his guitar and a loop pedal were enough to keep thousands of adoring fans hooked for one-and-a-half hours as his brand new tour landed in England.

Global superstar Ed Sheeran had screaming onlookers hanging on his every carefully-crafted word this week at Newcastle’s Metro Radio Arena – where he’s set to play the second of two sell-out gigs in his brief stop-off in the North-East tonight (Thursday).

Opening his show on Wednesday, the singer-songwriter confessed to the doting crowd he was just getting over a bout of “man flu” but was celebrating having his voice back. And boy did he not disappoint.

With only his voice, his trusty loop pedal, a handful of microphones and a few guitars at hand, he reeled off the majority of his latest album Divide, the namesake of his 2017 world tour.

Chart-topping Castle on the Hill was the first to fill the cavernous venue, kick-starting the somewhat sedate audience into motion.

And they didn’t really get going until Sing, Shape of You and You Need Me, I Don’t Need You came at the end.

He followed with Eraser and old favourite The A Team - one of the only songs in his gig repertoire when he played to a modest crowd of about 150 at the Cluny 2 in Newcastle’s trendy Ouseburn in 2011. It was also one of the few songs around when Ed took to the stage at Radio 1’s Hackney Weekend in 2012 when he stood out as one of the only artists to get up and entertain audiences with the same stripped-back production.

Among the setlist for the no-frills man of the moment, clad in a white t-shirt and jeans and only performing in front of a set of screens, was New Man, Happier, Galway Girl, Barcelona and Nancy Mulligan.

But it was Perfect, How Would You Feel, Dive and Thinking Out Loud that really tugged on the heartstrings.

The scruffy-haired singer’s dulcet tones naturally charmed the audience into waving phone torch-lights and even set off a few tears.