Ed Sheeran feels terrible for Mariah Carey after New Year's Eve disaster

Ed Sheeran was left cringing as he watched Mariah Carey's New Year's Eve drama unfold on TV, because he has been in her shoes.

The diva was forced to abandon a three-song set televised live when her in-ear monitors stopped working. TV bosses refused to cut to commercial and viewers watched as Mariah danced awkwardly on stage in New York's Times Square while trying to laugh off the catastrophe.

She later accused producers of sabotaging her set for ratings, accusations they have denied.

A day after former Spice Girls star Mel B took aim at Carey for not being more professional when her sound cut out, fellow Brit Sheeran has defended the Hero singer, revealing he has been in similar situations.

"I feel like that could happen to anyone," he told radio show Cubby and Carolina In The Morning. "That's happened to me before when the in-ears just didn't work. She's in the middle of Times Square with no monitors. It's really difficult. You can't sing in time for that.

"I've been at the center of an arena once and my in-ears just shut off, and the exact same thing happened to me. I know people are watching that and poking fun at her, but that's a really, really horrible situation to be in. You're just there, powerless."

And explaining what happens when in-ear monitors fail on performers, he added, "You can hear the track, but... it's, like, a two-second delay. If you tried to sing, it would sound dreadful. So she's stuck in the middle of that, being like, 'I can't, if I sing it's going to sound dreadful, and there's no monitors in front of me'.

"I didn't watch that and find that funny. I watched that and thought, 'Oh my God. That could've happen to me. That could've happened to anyone'. Obviously, the public doesn't know that. They're just like, 'Oh, something didn't work'. I watched that like, 'What would I do in that situation?'"