Ed Sheeran is thinking his thoughts out loud about the 2005 “South Park” episode “Ginger Kids.” The British singer, 30, slammed the episode, which premiered in November of that year, and said claimed it screwed up his life. The show spoofed orange-colored hair and featured Cartman creating a hate-speech presentation that said kids with ginger hair and pale skin are creepy creatures who suffer from “gingervitis.” “Having red hair in England was always a thing that people took the piss out of you for, but it was never something in America,” the “Don’t” musician recently told Slam Radio. “People never knew what a ginger was in America. That episode of ‘South Park’ f–king ruined my life,” he continued. “I was going to America and everyone was like, ‘I love your hair dude.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God, people like my hair?’” Sheeran added. “And then I remember that episode coming out and that was just it worldwide for the rest of my life.” The NSFW animated sitcom has been on the air since 1997 and is still going strong. Twenty-three seasons and 309 episodes have premiered since then and the show inked a $900 million deal with Viacom CBS last year. The show’s co-creator, Matt Stone, spoke to Bloomberg last August about the massive payday. “We have a ‘South Park’ 3D video game, release date unknown. We’re doing deep fakes. We have a studio with a dozen people who are deep fake artists. We’re working on a little more of this deep fake movie we’re trying to piece together,” Stone told the business publication of his hit franchise. “We did a ‘South Park’ movie in 1999, and we’ve never done another one because the show has been so satisfying,” he continued. “Now we’re older, and the idea of what streaming movies can be is pretty promising.” Stone added that he and co-creator Trey Parker are able to “do whatever we want,” adding that they are “the luckiest guys in TV” because of the support they have received. When asked if he was scared about cancel culture — as the duo created quite the controversial cartoon more than two decades ago — Stone said: “No. As you can see from this deal, we have ‘f–k you’ money now. We’re more interested in it than whining about it. It’s a legit cultural change. We explore it all the time in the show.” “South Park” streams on HBO Max and airs on Comedy Central.
