Я - Оззи. Всё, что мне удалось вспомнить

She also pointed out that when you switch on the telly in America, there’s always a guy being shot or chopped up or scraped off the tarmac, and no one bats an eyelid. But if you say ‘fuck’, everyone freaks out. It’s insane when you think about it.
Killing’s fine, but swearing isn’t.

Of all the people I got to meet, though, the most special was probably Paul McCartney. I mean, I’d looked up to that man since I was fourteen. But what the fuck are you supposed to talk to him about, eh? It’s like trying to strike up a conversation with God. Where d’you start? ‘Oh, I see you made the Earth in seven days. What was that like?’ We were at Elton John’s birthday party: Paul on one side of me, Sting on the other, and Elton opposite. It was like I’d died and gone to rock star heaven.

I’ve always believed that you’ve got to move with the times. You’ve got to try and take things to the next level, or you’ll just get stuck in a rut. If you stay the same you might keep a few people happy – like the ones who think that any kind of change is a sell-out – but sooner or later, your career will be fucked.

I think they had this idea in their heads that when I wasn’t being arrested for public intoxication, I went to a cave and hung upside down, drinking snakes’ blood. But I’m like Coco the Clown, me: at the end of the day, I come home, take off my greasepaint and my big red nose, and become Dad.

I can’t help thinking that there are only one or two ways of being brought into this world, but there are so many fucked-up ways of leaving it.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been wheeled off Concorde. I used to get so pissed on those flights, Sharon would have to carry me through immigration on a luggage trolley with my passport Scotch taped to my forehead. And then when they asked her if she had anything to declare, she’d just point at me and go, ‘Him’.”

It’s not that I needed any training to be the person I am on stage. I’m a lunatic by nature, and lunatics don’t need training – they just are.

As far as we were concerned, we were just a blues band that had decided to write some scary music. But then, long after we stopped writing scary music, people would still say, ‘Oh, they’re a heavy metal band, so all they must sing about is Satan and the end of the world.’ That’s why I came to loathe the term.

'Isn’t it strange how people will pay money to frighten themselves?’ I remember Tony saying one day. ‘Maybe we should stop doing blues and write scary music instead.

Even Geezer had given up his day job by then, and Earth was the one shot we had at making sure we never had to go back to the factories. We had to make it work – there was no choice.

To say that I suffer from pre-show nerves is like saying that when you get hit by an atom bomb it hurts a bit. I was absolutely fucking petrified when I got up on that stage. Sweaty. Mouth drier than a Mormon wedding. Numb legs. Racing heart. Trembling hands. The fucking works, man. I literally almost pissed myself. I’d never felt anything like it in my life.

My old man had done the right thing by not paying my fine. There was no fucking way I ever wanted to go back to prison after Winson Green, and I never did. Jail, yes. Prison, not a chance.

Nothing would stick in my head, and I couldn’t understand why my brain was such a useless piece of fucking jelly. I’d look at a page in a book and it might as well have been written in Chinese. I felt like I was no good, like I was a born loser. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I found out about my dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. No one knew anything about any of that shit back then.

I wasn’t really a bad guy, even though I wanted to be. I was just a kid trying to be accepted by the local gangs.

Like most kids who get into crime, I’d only ever wanted to be accepted by my mates. I thought it would be cool to be a bad guy, so I tried to be a bad guy. But I soon changed my mind when I got to Winson Green.

In those days, it was my ego that ordered the wine. The most expensive bottle on the whole list, just to be big-headed. Then I’d wake up the next morning with a two-hundred-quid hangover. But eventually I came to realise something about two-hundred-quid hangovers: they’re exactly the fucking same as two-quid hangovers.

The funny thing about getting married in America was that we needed to get a blood test before they’d give us a licence. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the bloke from the lab had called back and said, ‘Mr Osbourne, we appear to have found some blood in your alcohol.'

Sharon chose July 4 as our wedding day – so I’d never forget the anniversary.
‘At least it’s not the first of May,’ I said to her.
‘Why?’
‘That’s the date Thelma chose so I’d never forget the anniversary.’