Suffolk chart-topper Ed Sheeran has shot to number 12 on this year's Sunday Times' Young Rich List.

The 26-year-old singer-songwriter from Framlingham has seen his wealth rise from £45 million last year, which placed him joint 15th on the list in 2016 alongside software programmer Jack Cator, to an estimated £52 million.

Ed, who has recently been immortalised in a painting unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery, appeared on today's Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4.

MORE: Richest person in East Anglia has a fortune of £9.66bn

Opening the new series of the world famous show, Ed is set to reveal the music he would take with him if he were stranded on a remote island.

He told host Kirsty Young that he initially found it difficult coping with life in the spotlight.

He said: 'I don't think I did deal very well with it.

'It's a weird thing, playing a venue like Wembley Stadium with 87,000 people and walking off to sit in a dressing room with nothing but an air conditioning sound, you don't really know how to come down from there.

'At Wembley I had my friends and family but on tour I will admit I did lose myself for a bit.

'You can't really not go mental in that setting but I quickly realised my school mates had always been the constant thread of sanity.'

When Young asked if it was someone telling him to 'stop it with the girls and the drugs and the booze', Ed said: 'Yeah it was my cousin actually, who worked on the tour and who basically said he was leaving if it didn't calm down.'

Ed said he also found it hard to take the critical reviews of his first album +.

He said: 'All the reviews came in before the album was on sale and they were all one or two stars saying 'this is absolute dross'.

'They kind of crushed me because I wanted to be a successful musician for my whole career and all the papers I read reviews in had slated it, so I got really down for the week.

'Then the album came out and did 102,000 in week one.

'My main goal for my career was to do 100,000 albums and play Shepherd's Bush and the week the album came out it sold 100,000 and I played Shepherd's Bush, and I was there looking at these bad reviews and had just achieved my dream within a week and was thinking I shouldn't focus on what other people think of me.'

Ed has had a hugely successful 2017 already with 18 tracks from his third album Divide featuring in the top 20 just days after the album was released in March.

Ed revealed to host Kirsty Young he sees songwriting as a form of therapy.

He said: 'I think any time I've ever got down or ever felt low the one thing that picks me up from that is writing a song about it because at least you've got a positive experience out of a bad experience.'