The wisdom of Oz

Let me ask you a question, Mr Osbourne,” a doctor in America once said to me, after I’d listed all the heavy-duty substances I’d been abusing since the 1960s.

“All right,” I said. “Go ahead."

The doctor put down his notebook, loosened his tie a bit, and let out this long, weary sigh.

“Why are you still alive?"

I've often wondered the same thing myself. By all accounts I’m a medical miracle. When I die, I should donate my body to the Natural History Museum. It’s all very well going on a bender for a couple of days — but mine went on for 40 years. At one point I was knocking back four bottles of cognac a day, blacking out, coming to again, and carrying on. While filming The Osbournes I was also shoving 42 types of prescription medication down my neck, morning, noon and night — and that was before all the dope I was smoking in my “safe” room, away from the cameras. Meanwhile, I used to get through cigars like they were cigarettes. I’d even smoke them in bed.

“Do you mind?” I’d ask Sharon, as I lit up another Cuban the size of Red October.

“Oh no, please, go ahead,” she’d say, before whacking me with Good Housekeeping.
Then there are all the other things I’ve managed to not die from during my rock’n’roll career: like being hit by a plane (it crashed into my tour bus when I was fast asleep with Sharon in the back); or the time I got a false-positive HIV test; or the time when they told me I “probably” had Parkinson’s disease (they were wrong — it turned out to be a rare genetic condition, a Parkinsonian-like tremor). I was even committed to a mental asylum for a while. “Do you masturbate, Mr Osbourne?” was the first thing they asked me. “I’m here for my head, not my dick!” I replied.

And then there was the rabies treatment I had to go through after eating a bat — which you might have heard about once or twice. All I want to say is that I thought it was a rubber toy, swear on my 17 dogs’ lives.

Oh, and yeah, I’ve been dead twice: it happened (so I’m told) while I was in a chemically induced coma after I broke my neck in a quad-bike accident in 2003. I’ve got more metal screws in me now than in an Ikea flatpack thanks to the doctors and nurses at the NHS.
Times Online/continue reading