Tattoo pain made me faint, admits Ed: Singer reveals he passed out in the parlour while having his largest inking 

Sheeran got the new ink when he was on a six month sabbatical in Australia last year

He seems intent on destroying his squeaky clean persona by inking his entire body.

But his most ambitious tattoo to date caused Ed Sheeran to pass out from pain.

The singer spent seven hours getting the image of his stomach of the Sagrada Familia, an elaborate Roman Catholic church in Barcelona designed by Antoni Gaudi.

The Suffolk singer has already had more than 60 elaborate tattoos on his body and is planning another 30 his back.

Sheeran, 25, had the one Sagrada Familia image done while in Byron Bay, New South Wales, during a six month sabbatical in Australia last year.

He said: ‘I passed out while it was being done.’

He is now back in Australia to set up the release of third album Divide, due on March 3.

Speaking about his travels last year with girlfriend Cherry Seaborn he said: ‘We rented a car and drove up the East Coast of Australia.

‘We went to Fraser Island, that was probably my favourite part. We were staying with this dude who lived on his own and he took us fishing every day, then we cooked the fish we caught.

‘We went from Melbourne up to Sydney, then Byron Bay and the Great Barrier Reef. Cherry loved it, I think she wants to move here.’

Sheeran, who is thought to be worth £38million, has spent a painstaking 40 hours adding to his body art over the past 12 months.

Derby-based tattooist Kevin Paul, said: ‘Keeping it a secret was probably the hardest bit. Sometimes he’d travel to me but usually we’d go round to his house, put on a box set and order Nando’s, and do a bit of tattooing. It was all very chilled.’

Sheeran recently said of his tattoos: ‘I get one done for anything I’m proud of or for something I want to remember.’

He is also thought to have had a crest of his old school, a pair of Rolling Stones lips and a Grammy gong. 

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