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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Entertainment
Lizzie Edmonds

Sam Ryder performs at Vegan Camp Out Festival with swollen eye after surgery to remove lump

Sam Ryder did not let a swollen eye — the result of recent surgery — stop him from entertaining the crowds at Vegan Camp Out Festival.

The 2022 Eurovision runner-up was seen on stage at the festival with a swollen eye after undergoing surgery to remove a lump on his eyebrow.

The star, 34, confirmed the surgery was “nothing to worry about” — adding that performing to his fans had cheered him up post operation.

The Space Man singer posted on Instagram: “Had some surgery to remove a lump above my eye (should be all good though, nothing to worry about 🙏).

“Anyway, the best medicine was a weekend full of music with my pals and singing my head off with you all!”

He finished the post with the quip: “P.S. sorry for jumping around, Doc.”

Vegan Camp Out Festival took place between July 28 and 31 in Oxfordshire. Other top-billed performers on the line-up included comedian Romesh Ranganathan.

Last month, Ryder spoke about the Eurovision Song Contest which was hosted in Liverpool in May, saying that UK entry Mae Muller “smashed” her performance.

“Every single one of those people doing the same thing [as Muller], they’re stepping on to a stage for three minutes in front of 200 million people and it takes an incredible amount of guts, frankly, to do that,” Ryder told the PA news agency.

“I would say, is just to send as much respect and kindness and empathy to every single person that goes to do that and experiences that bonkersness.”

Muller came second to last, following Ryder’s second place last year, though he said music should not be scored in numbers but rather enjoyed by viewers.

“It’s music, you can’t score music in a metric, but what you can do is have a lot of admiration for people who put themselves in the arena,” he said.

“I can’t comment on why the scores land the way they do because I think there’s a multitude of factors.

“But what I can say is that it depends on us, frankly, as viewers and fans and human beings, to treat people that go and do something like that with respect.”

Following his success at Eurovision, and after amassing more than 14 million followers on TikTok,  Ryder has had a successful few years.

Most recently Ryder wrote Fought And Lost which featured in Apple TV+ hit show Ted Lasso, and said being part of it was “a dream”.

“We’ve just come back from LA and we were out there because the song we wrote called Fought And Lost was in Ted Lasso’s penultimate episode,” he said.

“It’s one of my favourite TV shows. I never imagined I’d be in this position.”

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