Following laser surgery for removal of a birthmark on his face, singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran has revealed that he developed a stutter.

In his speech, when he was honoured at the American Institute for Stuttering’s Freeing Voices Changing Lives Benefit Gala, Sheeran recalled in 2015, “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 anaesthetic on, and then ever since then I had a stutter.”

Although he attended speech therapy, in a more recent interview with Howard Stern, he disclosed that Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP, gifted to him by his uncle, was the ultimate cure.

“When I was nine, my uncle bought me The Marshall Mathers LP, and he just said to my dad, ‘This guy’s the next Bob Dylan, you gotta let him listen,'” he said. “My dad didn’t really clock it. He was just like, ‘Okay, Edward’s gonna go and listen to that.’ And by learning that record and rapping it back to back to back to back, it cured my stutter.”

Now a huge star, Sheeran and Eminem have since met, with the 32-year-old singer confirming that the rapper knows his story.

Earlier this month the ‘Bad Habits’ singer was found not liable for copyright infringement in his New York plagiarism trial. A Manhattan jury found Sheeran’s 2014 hit ‘Thinking Out Loud’ was “independently created”, without stealing elements from Marvin Gaye’s 1973 classic, ‘Let’s Get It On’. The British artist was forced to miss the funeral of his beloved Irish grandmother, Anne Mary due to the ongoing trial.

Stream Sheeran’s recent interview with Howard Stern below.