Ozzy's regret over reality life

Ozzy and Sharon: happily married

11 April 2012

Given the choice again, I would never have agreed to it. So says Ozzy Osbourne, talking about the compelling fly-on-the-wall TV series about his family that has made him £46 million richer.

'Since filming started, my wife has had cancer, my two kids became junkies, I went back to booze and smoking pot, and then I died twice in a bike accident. Life's not all about money.'

Ozzy speaks with absolute conviction when he says that he would hand back every penny if it could have spared his wife Sharon cancer of the colon or his two youngest children, Jack, now 19, and Kelly, 21, drug addiction.

'I did the show for a goof at first but, once you're committed, you're committed. It became like an out-of-control rocket ship,' says Ozzy, who made his name in the group Black Sabbath before presenting himself to an amazed world on TV.

'We won an Emmy after just one season. People who didn't know me as a rock and roll performer would recognise me from the TV. They'd come up and say: "You're just like my old man." '

His family's TV exposure may trouble him now, but of greater concern is what he exposed his family to over the years. 'You just don't realise,' says Ozzy, shaking his head ruefully, what effect your behaviour will have on your kids.

'Mine have been surrounded with drugs all their lives because of the industry I'm in. I did coke, speed, hash, pot, LSD, morphine, opium, heroin. I was a junkie, an alcoholic, I smoked cigarettes and drank vats of coffee. It's not surprising they started taking drugs.

'It all struck home when I was having a cross word with Jack. I told him: "Even when I was using drugs, you never went without a thing. You had a house in Beverly Hills, a house in Buckinghamshire. We went to Hawaii every year. Even when I was f**ked up, I went out on the road."

'He just looked at me and said: "I went without the main thing of all - I went without a father." I was devastated.'

Jack, who used to be addicted to heroin, is clean now. He checked himself into rehab and, says Ozzy proudly, is 'turning into the most incredible guy. He goes round schools and says to kids: "I started taking drugs at 13 and nearly killed myself." '

Kelly's doing great as well, he says. And so, finally, is Ozzy. He hasn't touched drugs, alcohol or tobacco for ten months. In fact, we meet shortly after Ozzy's latest Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, which may account for his confessional mood.

He tells me that after the meetings he has to write down all the dreadful things he has done when high on drugs or drink. 'Reading it, you realise what a mess you were in,' he says. 'You have to make amends to people you've harmed.'

Ozzy is doing his best. He has just recorded a charity single to raise money for the Daily Mail's Flood Aid Appeal for the victims of the Asian tsunami.

THE SINGLE was Sharon's idea and will be a cover of the Eric Clapton classic Tears In Heaven with vocals from, among others, Elton John, Phil Collins, Katie Melua, Steven Tyler, Ringo Starr, Rod Stewart and Robert Downey Jnr.

Ozzy says: 'It will be the first global charity single ever, and will hopefully help a lot of people in Asia to rebuild their lives.'

As for his past misdemeanours, he readily admits he was promiscuous, foul-mouthed, violent and once even tried to kill his wife.

'When you're younger, you think you're invincible. My father used to say: "Play now, pay later." That's the truth. The worst thing I did was trying to kill Sharon. I got busted for strangling her and when I woke up in Hammersmith nick, I hadn't a clue why I was there.

'I'd thought people just said they'd had blackouts to get out of trouble, but I couldn't remember a thing. When the policeman read me the charge, I freaked out. My father used to hit my mother all the time, so it was something I grew up with. But from that moment I've never laid a finger on my wife.' Ozzy's childhood in Birmingham was tough. His parents worked in a factory, and his father was a volatile drunk who would be beating his wife one minute and singing Auld Lang Syne the next. The family never went on holiday or owned a car.

'When I was young I would beg, borrow and steal,' he says. 'I hated it.' He was also dyslexic and suffered from what is now recognised as Attention Deficit Disorder.

He smoked his first cigarette at six years old and had his first drink at 14: 'At first I hated the taste, but then I thought: "F***ing hell. I've found what I've been looking for all my life."

'When, later on, Black Sabbath started getting big, I began smoking pot. At 25, I tried coke. With every new drug, it was as if I'd found what I'd been looking for, then it stopped working. Then all the old feelings came rushing back - this time, with the addiction.'

Ozzy was 26 and had been fired by Black Sabbath when he started dating Sharon, the daughter of his former manager Don Arden. 'I was living in a hotel in Los Angeles, ordering cases of booze, doing coke, smoking cigarettes and ordering pizzas.

'Sharon came round one day and said:"I want a word with you." I thought she was joking. I was in the Black Hole of Calcutta. I'd lived in this dark room for six months and suddenly she opened the door. I was attracted to her because she had a great vibe. To this day, when I hear her laugh it makes me happy.'

They married three years later. Sharon became Ozzy's manager and has remained the driving force behind his career. She has also saved him from death many times by dragging him to rehab clinics.

Ozzy absolutely adores his wife. Having thought he'd lost her to cancer four years ago, every day spent with her now is a blessing.

'I said to her yesterday: "Sharon, I can't believe this. Four years ago, I was looking at you thinking: 'Oh God, please don't take her away.' And look where you are now. I'm so proud of you." She's even invented a new hairstyle called the Shazza.'

WHEN she had cancer it 'spun me off the world', he says: 'Did I cry? Is the Pope Catholic? I was devastated. I thought: "Why not me? She doesn't deserve this." She doesn't smoke. She doesn't drink. She doesn't do drugs.

'If you picked up a paper one morning and read "Ozzy found dead", nobody would have been surprised.

'If you'd seen what that woman went through. She was in agony because she was allergic to morphine and codeine. She fought so hard. When she was on chemotherapy, the first day it would be like she was on speed, the second day she'd be sinking and the third day she was like something from The Exorcist.

'I couldn't sleep with her because I was terrified I was going to wake up and she'd be dead. I'd never met anyone who'd survived cancer.

'Over the seven months of chemo, she had seven major seizures. The last time we rushed to hospital, I looked at the doctor and felt like a two-year-old losing his mum.

'I thought: "I can't go on tour. Something could happen to her." But I was driving her nuts. She said: "Just go on the f***ing road and let me recover on my own."

'I went, but I wouldn't allow anyone to mention Sharon or cancer or anything. One night I was on stage and there was this mantra in my head: "She's going to die. She's going to die." I stopped singing and said: "I've got a message for home. Sharon's going to kick this cancer's f***ing a**e." She did.'

Ozzy is a multi-faceted man. He swears like a trooper, but is also extremely polite and funny. There is a warmth and openness about him. Nor had I anticipated the sheer depth of his love for his wife.

He says that, since her fight against cancer, Sharon lives every day as if it were her last. She has reshaped her body with £120,000 worth of cosmetic surgery and now her fame eclipses his.

'The day after the chemotherapy was over, she was up and running. Ever since she's been like Speedy Gonzales. I said to her: "What's wrong with you? Anyone would think this is your last day."

'She said: "That's the way I live my f***ing life now. If you don't like it, lump it."

'I'd love Sharon if she was the size of ten houses or as skinny as three twigs. I love her, the soul, the person. She was fat when I fell in love with her. She looked beautiful before the surgery and she looks beautiful now.'

Ozzy, it transpires, isn't averse to a bit of surgery either - although he claims he had his face job only to get a prescription for painkillers. Whatever the reasons, the surgery, along with nearly a year of clean living, has helped dispel a bit of the madeyed, clapped-out old rocker look.

'It boosted my confidence no end. I've had a face job and a new nose,' he says.

COSMETIC surgery was nothing compared to what he went through following a near-fatal quad bike accident a little over a year ago, when he broke his neck, eight ribs and severed an artery.

'I can't remember the actual accident,' he says. 'The last thing I remember was getting it out of the shed, the next thing I was waking up in hospital. My heart stopped twice. They had to put a pipe in my chest to drain the blood out of a lung and I've still got a metal rod in my shoulder.

'I was in a coma and remember having an incredible dream. It was so vivid - I was no longer with Sharon. She'd met another guy who had his own aeroplane.'

The thought of no longer being with Sharon bothered him terribly. He is quite open about his need to reaffirm his love for her. 'I say to her all the time: "You know what, Shaz? I love you more now than I did five minutes ago." And I do.'

Tears In Heaven will be released in April on SONY/BMG.

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Ozzy's regret over reality life

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