Ed Sheeran revealed he once had an embarrassing ordeal at US customs after Sir Elton John emailed him some dodgy videos.

The 24-year-old was presented with the Songwriter Of The Year award at the Ivor Novellos by the star who he revealed in his speech often sends him hilarious emails.

Backstage Sheeran said: “The worst email he ever sent me was I got to customs in New York once and I had 17 new emails from him and I was like, something must be important. And they were all video attachments, and I downloaded the first one, and yeah… It was good.

Sir Elton John and Ed Sheeran
Sir Elton John and Ed Sheeran perform on stage at the 55th annual Grammy Awards (John Shearer/Invision/AP)

“And I was at customs and it’s pretty hard to get into America anyway without those sort of videos. It happens quite a lot.”

But the A Team singer said he had had an even more bizarre encounter at the ceremony in London today.

Sheeran said : “To tell you a weirder thing I went to ACM college for about a month when I was 18 and some dude from ACM just came up to me and told me I’d overpaid my student fee and he gave me 200 quid.

“So that was a nice surprise and now I’ve got 200 quid!”, he laughed, brandishing a wad of cash.

Sheeran revealed after his whirlwind year of success he is planning to take some time off.

He said: “I’d like to live for a bit. I feel like I live in a bubble at the moment where everything normal happens outside and everything Hollywood happens inside. And I’d like to get on the outside for at least a year I think.”