Ozzy Osbourne

I wake up early at my house in Hidden Hills, California, and go downstairs to make myself some toast and a pot of my special atomic coffee (you double brew the beans, add a double shot of espresso, and stay awake for days). And there on the table as I walked into the kitchen was a bottle of champagne that my wife Sharon had left open from the night before. Now, a few years ago, this would have been a disaster for me: I would have polished off that champagne for breakfast, disappeared for a month, then tried to come home by driving my Ferrari through the front door. But I didn’t. I just put a cork in the bottle, and put the bottle back in the fridge. The only thought that popped into my head was, ‘I hope it ain’t gone flat, because that would be a terrible waste.

When I finally croak, this is what it’s gonna say on my headstone: ‘Ozzy Osbourne: born 1948; died whenever. PS: He bit the head off a bat.’ It’s been almost 30 years since I mistook that bat for a rubber toy — it’s not like I wanted to get rabies shots for the next two months — but it’s still the first question out of people’s mouths when I’m promoting a new album. But that’s what comes with being the Prince of Darkness, I suppose, so I’m not complaining — especially not when my new record, Scream, has gone into the Top Ten of the album charts in seven different countries this week. Not bad for a 61-year-old with five grandkids, eh?