Absurdity
Ed Sheeran apologizes for reading his apology from a teleprompter.
By BSN Staff, . BSN Network. Satire.
LONDON, Ed Sheeran issued a public apology Thursday, then issued a second public apology after a backstage camera captured him reading the first one from a teleprompter, then issued a third public apology after it became clear that the second apology had also been scrolling past at approximately 140 words per minute behind his left ear.
Sheeran, who has written an estimated 300 songs about his own romantic failures, childhood memories, deceased friends, and feelings about driving through small English towns at night, apparently could not locate any of those feelings on short notice without a prompt from a man named Darren operating a VariZoom controller offstage.
"I want you all to know that this comes from the heart," Sheeran said, in a statement prepared by Polished Contrition Ltd., a London-based crisis communications firm that charges 4,200 pounds per hour and describes its service as "bespoke emotional architecture."
The original apology concerned an unspecified incident Sheeran's team referred to only as "the matter," which ensured that global press coverage spent less time on whatever the matter was and more time on a man in a rust-colored cable-knit jumper struggling to keep up with his own remorse.
Polished Contrition Ltd. released a statement confirming that the teleprompter copy had been "workshopped across three sessions" and had originally included the line "I've been doing a lot of reflecting," which was cut in the second draft because, a spokesperson said, it "tested as too reflective."
Sheeran addressed the teleprompter controversy directly in his follow-up apology, explaining that he had "wanted to make sure he got the words exactly right," a standard he has never previously applied to the words "Lego House," "Bloodstream," or the bridge of "Shape of You," all of which he reportedly wrote in under an hour on a loaner guitar.
"I'm a songwriter," Sheeran said, in the third statement, which his team confirmed was delivered extemporaneously before adding that it had been rehearsed seventeen times that morning. "Words are my whole thing. I just wanted to be precise."
The teleprompter operator, Darren Fitch, 34, of Croydon, was credited in a footnote to the second apology as "scrolling support," making him, according to entertainment attorneys, the first person in British public life to receive a formal production credit on a statement of personal remorse.
Fitch told a reporter outside his building Thursday evening that it had been a normal job, that Sheeran had asked him to slow down during the paragraph about "genuine reflection," and that he had done so.
"He seemed sorry," Fitch said. "Or whoever wrote it did."
A fourth apology is expected Friday, pending font approval.
This is satire. The events and quotes are invented and none of it is real news.