Ed Sheeran Reacts to Being Named in Ali G's Comeback Trailer: "Tell 10-Year-Old Me"

Ed Sheeran has responded to being name-checked as one of the things that went wrong in the world during Ali G's 20-year absence — and he could not have been more delighted.

The trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen's new film Ali G: Who Iz I?, released in late August 2026, features the comedian's clueless interviewer character returning after two decades away to find everything has, in his view, gone sideways. Baron Cohen introduces the trailer with a deadpan line: "I've been gone for 20. There's been wars, COVID, and Ed Sheeran" (Consequence). Wars, the pandemic and the Suffolk-born singer are listed side by side among the calamities.

Sheeran took to Instagram with a fan's reaction rather than a celebrity's grievance. "Tell 10-year-old me that Ali G would put him in his movie," he wrote, before signing off with "Restecpa" — the character's deliberate mispronunciation of "respect," first used in the 2002 film Ali G Indahouse (Billboard). The post landed on 29 August 2026, the same day Billboard first reported it.

For anyone who missed Ali G the first time around, Baron Cohen created the character in the late 1990s: a faux-naïve, tracksuit-wearing interviewER from Staines who would put real public figures in excruciatingly funny situations by asking them staggeringly ill-informed questions. The character graduated from television sketches to a feature film with Ali G Indahouse in 2002, then largely retired as Baron Cohen moved on to Borat, Brüno and other creations.

Ali G: Who Iz I? is a mockumentary that picks up the character's story two decades later, finding a world he barely recognises (Variety). The film also marks a career first for Baron Cohen: it is his debut as a solo feature director, having previously co-directed and produced but never helmed a film entirely on his own (Billboard). Amazon MGM will release the film in theatres on 23 October 2026.

What makes the moment land is the collision of two very different corners of British pop culture. Sheeran, now one of the best-selling recording artists in the world, grew up in Suffolk as a child when Ali G was at his cultural peak. His reaction reads less like a PR-managed response and more like someone genuinely tickled to be part of the bit. Being listed alongside global catastrophes as a punchline is the joke, of course — and Sheeran, clearly, was in on it from the first read.

Whether the film itself leans into more of the same satirical ambushs that made Ali G famous, or takes the mockumentary format in a new direction, audiences will find out in October. For now, the trailer has already done what trailers are supposed to do: it got people talking — and at least one of the people it mentioned talking back.