When my biography of Ozzy Osbourne was launched in 2002, it flew off the cabinets.

It was an prompt best-seller as followers flocked to learn extra a couple of man who was a real British eccentric. 

Light, humorous and by no means something lower than 100% genuine, his frailties and insecurities solely served to make him extra human to us.

And the truth that Ozzy by no means took himself too significantly, made individuals love him all of the extra. 

‘I do know I’m just a few bloke who received the lottery, it might simply have gone the opposite means for me,’ he stated.  

Whereas Ozzy is likely to be most well-known for Black Sabbath, it was his unlikely actuality sequence that gave followers all around the world – previous and new – an perception into his character.

The Osbournes was the sequence that might change the face of fly-on-the-wall tv for ever. 

Earlier than the Kardashians got here The Osbournes, the docu-soap that made stars of heavy steel singer Ozzy Osbourne, his spouse Sharon and their youngsters Kelly and Jack. 

The present was a revelation – exhibiting the Prince of Darkness as he’d by no means been seen earlier than. 

For whereas nearly each different utterance was a swearword, in each different respect the wildest man in rock appeared each inch the archetypal sit-com dad – 53 years of age, genial, flustered and fully baffled by his household and the trendy world. 

The Osbournes was humorous primarily as a result of Ozzy wasn’t truly attempting to be.

Viewers noticed him struggling to vary a bin liner, battling unsuccessfully with the TV distant management and gathering his incontinent canine from the vet. 

The mixture of eccentricity, superstar and a whole lack of self-awareness was TV gold and the present was an prompt hit, pulling in additional than six million viewers in America each week – the highest-rated present in MTV’s 20-year historical past. When it was proven in Britain the scores went off the size. 

Simply 10 years earlier, the person who had bitten the top off a bat, had seen his albums slapped with parental warning stickers.

Now, hilariously, he was the one attempting and failing to determine household values together with his youngsters in his personal inimitable means. 

In a single unforgettable episode, youngsters Kelly and Jack are making ready for an evening out when Ozzy – who was clear on the time, having lengthy battled drug and drink points – referred to as them into the kitchen to ship a little bit fatherly recommendation.

‘Don’t get drunk or stoned tonight. I’ll be f*****g p****d off as a result of I can’t,’ he warned. ‘And for those who’re gonna have intercourse, put on a condom.’ 

Earlier than The Osbournes, a TV present based mostly on Ozzy had been into account for some time and scriptwriters hung out with the household so as to give you a present based mostly on the rocker’s life. 

Shortly realising that the Osbourne household’s humour was far funnier than something deliberate, they instructed a fly-on-the-wall sequence, the place a full-time TV crew moved in, establishing cameras and filming with the household 24 hours a day. 

On the coronary heart of the present was Ozzy’s relationship together with his spouse Sharon. And whereas the couple bickered and fought, their love for one another shone by way of and to their youngsters’ horror they had been brazenly affectionate with one another round the home. 

Many episodes had been spent feuding, however they had been by no means happier than when united in opposition to a typical enemy, together with their subsequent door neighbours, sarcastically accused of disturbing the Osbournes after they invited buddies spherical for a folk-singing session bashing out tunes similar to Kumbaya.

‘You w*****s’ haven’t any respect!’ Ozzy hilariously yelled. 

The present actually remodeled Ozzy’s life. He was already a legend on the planet of rock, promoting greater than 100 million albums because the lead singer of Black Sabbath and as a massively profitable solo artist. 

However the Osbournes launched him to an entire new viewers, who had not been witness to his excesses within the Nineteen Seventies and ‘80s. And his new discovered fame even noticed him invited to carry out for the Queen at her Golden Jubilee Pop Live performance at Buckingham Palace. 

‘He glorified medication, drink and Devil, so why has Ozzy Osbourne been requested to play for the Queen?’, one shocked newspaper requested. 

Ozzy was inclined to agree – the invitation was one which astonished him as a lot because it delighted him. However like the whole lot else in his life, it did nothing to vary him.