Suffolk superstar Ed Sheeran his millions of fans an early New Year treat with a short video message announcing he will releasing new songs in the coming days.

The singer, who grew up in Framlingham, tweeted: “Hello 2017...”, to introduce a nine second video to his 16.7million followers.

Holding an A4 sheet of paper with the handwritten words: “New music coming Friday!!”, the A-team star waves to the camera and then jokingly puts the paper in his mouth before the short video ends.

In just a matter of minutes the Tweet had been shared tens of thousands of times among his legions of global fans.

The multi-award winning star had already provoked attention just a few weeks ago when he changed his Twitter profile picture to a plain blue image, exactly a year after he announced he was taking a break from social media. It led to speculation from fans that he was about to release his third album.

Ed’s two previous albums have run along a mathematical symbol theme. His debut “+”, pronounces “plus”, reached number one in the UK charts and sold more than two million copies, while his follow-up “x”, pronounced “multiply”, also reached number one and went nine-times platinum.