With his stout heart and love of an ale or two, Ed Sheeran fit right in when he played an impromptu gig at Hobbiton.
The English singer and songwriter made a detour from his current tour of New Zealand for a visit to Hobbiton, the outdoor movie set that appears in Peter Jackson’s legendary Lord of the Rings films and its Hobbit prequels.
In a clip doing the rounds of TikTok, Sheeran swung a guitar at the final stop of the LOTR tour, the Green Dragon Inn, for a performance of his 2013 single “I See Fire,” the soundtrack to Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
“We had an unexpected guest at The Green Dragon Inn tonight,” notes the tour guides, which host thousands of guests each year at the set in Waikato on New Zealand’s north Island, a spot known to millions as the home village of Frodo, Samwise and scores of nuggety halflings.
The surprises didn’t stop there. Sheeran stopped by Kōwhai Intermediate and Manurewa Intermediate schools in Auckland for surprise performances, footage of which can be seen here.
Sheeran completes the New Zealand leg of + – = ÷ x Tour (pronounced “The Mathematics Tour”) on Saturday (Feb. 11) at Eden Park, Auckland. He then heads west for his Australian stadium tour, also produced by Frontier Touring and kicking off next Friday, Feb. 17 at Suncorp Stadium.
The Brit is a touring juggernaut in these parts. With his 2017 Divide tour of Australia, Sheeran sold upwards of 1 million tickets, breaking the all-time record for a single tour set by Dire Straits in the 1980s. His latest tour of these parts is slated to wrap March 12 at Optus Stadium, Perth.
Watch his performance at Hobbiton below.
