Riding Shotgun

One of Britain’s most successful singer-songwriters, George Ezra hits the stage in Dubai this month. But who is the baby-faced bloke behind chart-topper Budapest?

It’s something of a musical irony, but you’d have to have travelled far further than Eastern Europe to have escaped the rise to fame of George Ezra.

In truth, you’d have to have been living under a rock to dodge the musical juggernaut that is the 25-year-old Brit’s career thus far. Raised in Hertford, England, Ezra doesn’t look like a stereotypical pop star – he confesses to walking around London in a terrible sunhat and shades picked up from a petrol station to ensure he attracts stares, not for his famous face, but because he looks so awful people can’t place him – but his rise to fame could have been taken straight from Simon Cowell’s dream journal. Ezra wasn’t even 21 when his debut single,