When my biography of Ozzy Osbourne was released in 2002, it flew off the shelves.
It was an instant best-seller as fans flocked to read more about a man who was a genuine British eccentric.
Gentle, funny and never anything less than 100% authentic, his frailties and insecurities only served to make him more human to us.
And the fact that Ozzy never took himself too seriously, made people love him all the more.
‘I know I’m just some bloke who won the lottery, it could easily have gone the other way for me,’ he said.
While Ozzy might be most famous for Black Sabbath, it was his unlikely reality series that gave fans all over the world – old and new – an insight into his character.
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The Osbournes was the series that would change the face of fly-on-the-wall television for ever.
Before the Kardashians came The Osbournes, the docu-soap that made stars of heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne, his wife Sharon and their children Kelly and Jack.
The show was a revelation – showing the Prince of Darkness as he’d never been seen before.
For while almost every other utterance was a swearword, in every other respect the wildest man in rock appeared every inch the archetypal sit-com dad – 53 years of age, genial, flustered and completely baffled by his family and the modern world.
The Osbournes was funny primarily because Ozzy wasn’t actually trying to be.
Viewers saw him struggling to change a bin liner, battling unsuccessfully with the TV remote control and collecting his incontinent dog from the vet.
The combination of eccentricity, celebrity and a complete lack of self-awareness was TV gold and the show was an instant hit, pulling in more than six million viewers in America every week – the highest-rated show in MTV’s 20-year history. When it was shown in Britain the ratings went off the scale.
Just 10 years earlier, the man who had bitten the head off a bat, had seen his albums slapped with parental warning stickers.
Now, hilariously, he was the one trying and failing to establish family values with his kids in his own inimitable way.
In one unforgettable episode, teenagers Kelly and Jack are preparing for a night out when Ozzy – who was clean at the time, having long battled drug and drink issues – called them into the kitchen to deliver a little fatherly advice.
‘Don’t get drunk or stoned tonight. I’ll be f*****g p****d off because I can’t,’ he warned. ‘And if you’re gonna have sex, wear a condom.’
Before The Osbournes, a TV show based on Ozzy had been under consideration for a while and scriptwriters spent time with the family in order to come up with a show based on the rocker’s life.
Quickly realising that the Osbourne family’s humour was far funnier than anything planned, they suggested a fly-on-the-wall series, where a full-time TV crew moved in, setting up cameras and filming with the family 24 hours a day.
At the heart of the show was Ozzy’s relationship with his wife Sharon. And while the couple bickered and fought, their love for each other shone through and to their kids’ horror they were openly affectionate with each other around the house.
Many episodes were spent feuding, but they were never happier than when united against a common enemy, including their next door neighbours, ironically accused of disturbing the Osbournes when they invited friends round for a folk-singing session bashing out tunes such as Kumbaya.
‘You w*****s’ have no respect!’ Ozzy hilariously yelled.
The show literally transformed Ozzy’s life. He was already a legend in the world of rock, selling more than 100 million albums as the lead singer of Black Sabbath and as a hugely successful solo artist.
But the Osbournes introduced him to a whole new audience, who had not been witness to his excesses in the 1970s and ‘80s. And his new found fame even saw him invited to perform for the Queen at her Golden Jubilee Pop Concert at Buckingham Palace.
‘He glorified drugs, drink and Satan, so why has Ozzy Osbourne been asked to play for the Queen?’, one shocked newspaper asked.
Ozzy was inclined to agree – the invitation was one that astonished him as much as it delighted him. But like everything else in his life, it did nothing to change him.
As he reflected at the time: ‘There’s always someone out there greater than me and if it all goes down the s**t-pan, then I can’t complain.
‘Everything comes to an end, sooner or later I suppose. But the truth is I don’t want it to end. I mean, what the f**k does a lunatic do when he retires?’
Sadly, Ozzy never got to find out; his death tragically coming just weeks after his final performance.
But as Ozzy himself dryly remarked: ‘Whatever else I do, my epitaph will be – Ozzy Osbourne born December 3, 1948. Died, whenever. And he bit the head off a bat.’
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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