I’ve had a f***ing great time, said Ozzy Osbourne as we celebrate his last hurrah as rock’s greatest hellraiser

OZZY OSBOURNE is the “Prince Of Darkness” who, for decades, has shone a bright light into our lives. When he takes to the stage in his hometown on July 5, it will be a last hurrah for the lovable Brummie — rock’s greatest hellraiser. Despite contending with enough ailments to fill a medical dictionary, he will go down fighting with that broad grin on his comical face. I’ve met Ozzy many times over the past 20 years and have always left his company thinking he could have had a successful alternative career as a stand-up comedian.

Never be fooled into thinking he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer — spend a bit of time with the “Godfather Of Heavy Metal” and he’ll have you in stitches with his quick wit. The announcement that Black Sabbath are reuniting for a mega heavy metal fest at Villa Park alongside Metallica and a host of great bands reminded me of this classic Ozzy anecdote. It was about Sabbath’s bassist and chief lyricist Geezer Butler.

He said: “Geezer is a vegetarian. When he walked off stage, I asked him, ‘Does Your wife eat meat?’. “And he replied, ‘Yeah.’ So I said, ‘What, do you have a f***ing funeral every time she has a bacon sandwich?’”. This brought us on to his most infamous incident — the moment he bit the head off a bat, thinking it was made of rubber. It happened on January 20, 1982, at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa, during the Diary Of A Madman solo tour when a member of the audience threw the poor creature onto the stage.

Ozzy later claimed that the bat was still alive and he thought it had managed to bite him first, hence he needed treatment to prevent rabies. He told me how his audiences had never let him forget the ­incident across the decades since it happened. “At one of my gigs, someone let a dog go with a sign on its leg, saying, ‘Please don’t eat me!’ ”. Ozzy also talked about how he loved to clown around, a bit like the late great Tommy Cooper in his pomp, but that his antics didn’t always go down too well with his bandmates.

At one of my gigs, someone let a dog go with a sign on its leg, saying, ‘Please don’t eat me!'. Of one particular tour, he said: “Most nights, I slipped over on the stage. I nearly fell into the f***ing orchestra pit. “I mean it’s tough on the other guys. When they’re getting all serious, I make them laugh and they get p***ed off. “Nothing’s rehearsed with me. One day, I’ll just put a bucket on my head.”.

It’s sad to think that Ozzy, 76, can no longer prance around like a loon, that he “can’t walk” any more because of his worsening Parkinson’s disease. He even made a quip to me about that: “I wish I could get my balance back. “I was looking into these bionic legs which you can get now — then I really would be Iron Man!” (A reference to one of Black Sabbath’s biggest, most bone-crunching tracks).

When I spoke to him last October, just before he was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame for a second time, Ozzy managed to put a positive spin on his situation. “I’m nearly f***ing dead!” he cried. “But [wife] Sharon said to me recently, ‘If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything?’. “I answered, ‘No, I’ve had a f***ing great time’.”. He even broke into the immortal song from his favourite film, Monty Python’s Life Of Brian.

“Always look on the bright side of life… life’s a piece of s**t, when you look at it.”. Then he launched into another typically funny anecdote: “I used to sing that to my kids when they were babies. I love that movie!. “The other day I went to my chiropractor in Beverly Hills. Who should be sitting in the waiting room but John ‘f***ing’ Cleese. It was like meeting the Pope!”. The fact that his final gig is in Birmingham promises to make it one of the most emotional days of Ozzy’s life less ordinary.

When he appeared at the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony there in 2022 alongside Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi dressed like a Christopher Lee-style vampire, Ozzy told me: “It doesn’t get any better than playing Birmingham — just to stand on stage in my hometown, playing live.”. This prompted me to look back at some of our older interviews when he talked about the early days of Sabbath, before “getting successful and having your ego ‘f***ing oiled up”.

In 2009, I flew to Los Angeles and took a cab out to the mansion he shared with his “rock” Sharon and countless dogs. Sharon was away filming America’s Got Talent and Ozzy had the run of the place, which included a swish new basement studio. It was just outside the door to this that I had my picture taken with the eternal prankster pretending to strangle me. Later, we sat in his library, or perhaps “man cave” is a better description, surrounded by his collection of World War II memorabilia, including the opera glasses of Eva Braun, Hitler’s muse.