Heavy metal was never my music and Black Sabbath were never my band. But Ozzy superseded the genre he and his mates invented.

There simply weren’t – aren’t – any other rock superstars like Ozzy, who spent 76 years defying medical advice that clean living leads to a longer life.

However rich and famous he became, and however lavish his jet-setting lifestyle became, he always remained the working-class Brummie with a self-deprecating sense of humour.

I always felt slightly uneasy about the cartoon character Ozzy became: a unique sort of national treasure, not least for his ability simply to stay alive so long.

Whenever I saw him, for as long as I can remember, he seemed a shambling simpleton with the gait of a doddery old man and the mumbling speech of a bloke with brain damage.

It almost seemed voyeuristic to laugh at his jokes but he always played up (or down?) to that image and those jokes were always at his own expense.

Never more so than by putting himself in the public eye in that reality show, even if it was primarily the work of his wife and manager Sharon, who came across as three parts carer to one part wife.

Meanwhile her husband came across – in sharp contrast to his stage image as the Prince of Darkness – as a doting dad who loved nothing better than being at home with his family.

I never met Ozzy but I encountered Sharon once when I found myself at a 40th birthday party in Beverly Hills (lone story) in what turned out to be the house next door to the Osbournes.

In an irony amplified by the TV show, the Osbournes had become enraged by their neighbours playing loud music late at night in the garden; not just loud music but “rave music” rather than the Osbournes’ preferred genre of heavy rock.

Now I was in that very same garden, and at one point over the evening (which included such LA nonsense as an “aura reader” in the pool house) Sharon knocked on the door to deliver a birthday
present to the birthday boy, Charlie.

The feud between neighbours, it seemed, might just have been concocted, or at least exaggerated, by the TV people for entertainment value.

That was the closest I got to meeting Ozzy and while I doubt I’ve ever listened to a Sabbath album from start to finish, this tune was inescapable as I grew up.

It’s a classic, and I’m grateful to my friend Mark Westcott for his anecdote about the time he met Ozzy- in a guitar shop on Denmark Street.

Mark was able to tell the Prince of Darkness in person about his friend Dave’s misinterpretation of the lyrics – one of the greatest mondegreens I’ve ever heard: “Finished with my woman cos she couldn’t help me with my blinds / Now I’ve put up curtains, got a new bird with an ace behind.”

Ozzy apparently laughed and replied: “I don’t think your mate Dave misheard my lyrics, but I do think he’s a fuckin’ genius!” 

RIP Ozzy Osbourne (1948-2025)