BACK IN APRIL, about a month before the Galway Girl video starring Saoirse Ronan dropped, Ed Sheeran told a curious story from the set.
He said that Saoirse Ronan was supposed to handwrite ‘Galway Girl’ on his arm for a “tattoo” but she intentionally misspelled it as ‘Galway Grill’.
Now, the assumption was that this was just part of the video – surely he didn’t actually get this tattooed on his arm?
Sure enough, when the video landed there was a scene where Ed is getting a tattoo and it says “Galway Grill”
But the story took another turn last night – when Saoirse Ronan was on The Late Late Show with James Corden in the States.
She confirmed that it says Galway Grill and that it’s a *real tattoo*
Corden also asked was the “grill” part a mistake:
“It’s not a mistake. Ed got up on stage two days after we did it and said that I had made the mistake and it makes me look illiterate. I’m just here to say that it was all planned.”
“We thought it would be funny and edgy if we misspelled girl and made it grill instead – because we’re so clever”
Corden had to clarify that this is a real tattoo. Saoirse confirmed:
“It’s an actual tattoo, and when we were doing the music video Ed shot it all himself with this rig… and we ended it by going to this famous pub back home where this was a birthday party going on for someone he knows, and he wanted to get this tattoo. That’s my handwriting.”
At this point Neil deGrasse Tyson stepped in with a confused look: “So, it was tattooed with the wrong word? Purposefully with the wrong word?”
Saoirse, again, laid it out in plain terms:
forever, forever
So, to summarise: Ed Sheeran now has an actual tattoo that says “Galway Grill” on his arm in Saoirse Ronan’s handwriting because they thought it would be a funny thing to include in the video but now he has it forever.
Wild.
