17 hours ago
I did one of Ozzy Osbourne's final interviews… & despite health woes he said ‘I'm nearly dead – but I can't complain'
IN October last year, my video call flickered into life and there was the unmistakable face of Ozzy Osbourne.
He gave me one of his broad, infectious grins. It was the same old Ozzy — despite everything.
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With some trepidation, I asked him: 'How are you doing?'
I knew he was in a bad way.
A combination of Parkinson's disease plus the after effects of his quad bike accident and a night-time fall in his bathroom at his Los Angeles mansion.
'I'm nearly f**ing dead!' replied the lovable rogue in his warm Brummie tones, unaffected by years of living in the States.
'But if it is the end of the road for me, I can't complain,' he had continued.
He drew my attention to the loving wife who was with him through thick and thin, the mother of three of his six children.
He said: 'Sharon said to me recently, 'If you had to do it over again, would you change anything?'. 'I told her, 'No, I had a f***ing great time'.'
Then he heaped praise on Sharon for being 'so helpful and supportive' with him.
'It's been hard on her though,' he said, 'because she has to hold the fort'.
Ozzy had long given up alcohol but added: 'My tolerance has gone I'm glad to say because when I started drinking, I would start looking for drugs.
Ozzy Osbourne fights back tears as he thanks wife Sharon for 'saving his life' in appearance at Rock N Roll Hall of Fame
'Sharon had good training in dealing with chaos!'
Only three weeks ago, the Prince of Darkness who brought light into so many lives gave us one last hurrah when heavy metal royalty descended on Villa Park, Birmingham, to pay their respects.
The Back to the Beginning gig ended with him — seated on a giant black throne because he could not stand — joining his Black Sabbath muckers on the songs that took him to the world stage.
Paranoid, Iron Man and War Pigs. Songs that shaped a huge, loud and lairy genre of popular music.
John Michael Osbourne was born 76 years ago into humble surroundings.
His mum Lilian worked at the Lucas car parts factory in Birmingham.
His dad Jack worked night shifts as a toolmaker at the General Electric Company.
But as Ozzy, Prince of Darkness, he was one of the world's greatest showmen.
Singer, hellraiser, comedian, family man (and occasional love cheat), he always kept a smile on his face — even when the chips were down.
I got to know Ozzy well over the years and, every time I met him or spoke to him, he had me in stitches with his wicked sense of humour.
Even when his health was failing, he tried to look on the bright side — literally.
In that same interview last autumn, he broke into the immortal lines from his favourite film, Monty Python's The Life Of Brian: 'Always look on the bright side of life . . . life's a piece of s**t, when you look at it.'
Then Ozzy added: 'I used to sing that to my kids when they were babies. I love that movie!
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'The other day I went to my chiropractor in Beverly Hills and who should be sitting in the waiting room but John 'f**ing' Cleese? It was like meeting the Pope!'
Ozzy also told me about his dream of seeing out his days back home in England, something he managed to do even if it was only for a short time.
"I'm English but I'm becoming an American Brummie,' he sighed.
'I don't want to end my days in America.'
Ozzy was never cut out for school, partly because of his undiagnosed dyslexia.
He left at 15 and found himself in short-lived jobs — including killing pigs in a slaughterhouse.
Then, aged 17, he tried his hand at burglary, stealing shirts from a local shop, and spent six weeks in Birmingham's Winson Green prison.
Yet, from an early age, Ozzy was spellbound by music — most notably The Beatles.
In another of our chats, he cast his mind back to his teenage years and said: 'When I was walking down Witton Road in Aston with a blue transistor radio and She Loves You came on, I thought, 'What the f*** is this?'.
'It used to be Cliff Richard and all that stuff — but this was The Beatles!'
He decided to pursue his dream of becoming a singer — and posted an advert in a local music shop, saying: 'Ozzy Zig Needs Gig. Experienced frontman, owns own PA system.'
It attracted the attention of two of his future Sabbath bandmates — guitarist/composer Tony Iommi and the bassist/lyricist Geezer Butler.
Before the recent Villa Park gig, I asked Iommi to go 'Back to the Beginning'.
'At school, I didn't even know that Ozzy could sing,' he said.
'It was a racket at first I must say but, after we'd been playing for a while, he got really good.'
As for the singer's madcap behaviour, Iommi continued: 'He got more loony as we went on.
'Eventually, he became like he is — very out front.'
Ozzy once regaled me with stories of his early Sabbath days, how they had so little money that they had to choose how to spend their earnings between 'a bag of chips or a packet of No6 cigarettes'.
Then, in 1970, the band released second album Paranoid, ramping up their dark satanic image.
They were headed for the big time, not only in the UK but in the US and across the world.
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The following year, aged 22, Ozzy married nightclub attendant Thelma Riley but quickly decided it was 'a terrible mistake'.
And though Sabbath released a string of high octane, hugely successful albums . . . Master of Reality, Vol. 4, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and so on . . . the wheels fell off for the larger-than-life singer.
He would numb himself with booze and cocaine and later confessed he had been a 'disgusting' father to his two kids with Thelma — Jessica and Louis.
On April 27, 1979, Ozzy was fired by Sabbath, a seismic event in his life and explained to me by Iommi.
'Obviously drugs were involved,' he said.
'It got to a stage where Ozzy had lost interest.
'He'd go missing for a couple of days in Los Angeles — things like that.
'I was nominated to go to the record company and make all the excuses.
'It got to a point where I had to say, 'Look, we'll have to replace Ozzy or break up'. At the time, it was best for both of us and Ozzy went off and did his own thing.'
And that's when Sharon entered his life.
Then 27, she was the daughter of Sabbath's manager Don Arden.
She convinced Ozzy that he could be a solo star, and that she should be the one to manage him.
Not only did she become mother to his three children Aimee, Kelly and Jack but she also got things back on track — up to a point.
Debut solo album Blizzard of Ozz, with big numbers like Crazy Train, Suicide Solution and Mr Crowley, appeared in September 1980, and eventually sold more than five million copies.
This brings us to Ozzy's most infamous incident — the moment he bit the head off a bat, thinking it was made of rubber.
It happened on January 20, 1982, in Des Moines, Iowa, when a member of the audience threw the poor creature on to the stage.
Ozzy later revealed that the bat was still alive and that it bit him first, hence he needed treatment for rabies.
He told me how his audiences had never let him forget the incident across the decades.
'At one of my gigs, someone let a dog go with a sign on its leg, saying 'Please don't eat me!'.'
Ozzy also told me how loved to clown around like the late great Tommy Cooper — but that his antics didn't go down too well with his bandmates.
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Of one particular tour, he said: 'Most nights, I slipped over on the stage.
'I nearly fell into the f***ing orchestra pit.
"I mean it's tough on the other guys.
'When they were all getting serious, I'd make them laugh and they all get pissed off.
'Nothing's rehearsed with me.
'One day, I'll just put a bucket on my head.'
In later years, Ozzy became much more than just a singer.
He and his family became global TV sensations through their groundbreaking fly-on-the-wall documentary The Osbournes.
It was such a smash hit that it paved the way for similar reality shows featuring Paris Hilton and later The Kardashians.
I remember visiting Ozzy in LA not long after the show ended and being surrounded by some of the family's numerous dogs.
In 2022, I asked him if he missed the hellraising and he answered: 'On the 4th of July, my wife and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary and I said to Sharon, 'What the f*** happened to 40 years?'.
When we spoke, he was at pains to point out: 'It's seven years since I had a drink, seven years clean and sober.
'Don't smoke tobacco, don't drink, don't do drugs.
'It's quite boring actually.'
So, what could he still do to give him a hit, I asked.
'The only thing left is masturbation,' laughed Ozzy.
On a more serious note, he added: 'Nearly all the friends I used to drink and do drugs with are dead.
'But I'm still here for a reason.'
That reason was his loving family, wife Sharon, his children and grandchildren - and making music.
'The only thing I can do in life is entertain people, I love it,' he said.
'I'll only stop when a pine lid is being nailed to my box.
'When I first found out I had Parkinson's I thought, 'F***!', but then I thought, 'It could be worse, I could be dead'. Everybody would like to be me for a weekend. I've had a great life.'
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