OZZY OSBOURNE: 'I Was Bad For A Long Time'

Celia Walden of Telegraph.co.uk recently conducted an interview with legendary heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

On his enduring success:

"I'm 61 next birthday, and for some reason people keep wanting to hear me and see me. I don't know what happened to the years."

On how whole periods of his life started to come back when he began to work on his autobiography, "I Am Ozzy":

"I wasn't always a happy-go-lucky guy. I was bad for a very long time: I beat my wife and the rest of it… but the autobiography was cathartic — it helped me get rid of some of the guilt."

On the excesses of previous years:

"The first time I tried cocaine, I remember thinking, 'I've found the meaning of life!' But then I loved morphine and everything else, too. At my worst, I was buying kilos of the stuff every week. That said, by far the most addictive thing I've ever put in my body is tobacco. By the end, I was chewing the gum, smoking the fake cigarettes, wearing the patches and smoking 20 a day. I tried cigars, but within a week I was smoking 30 Cohibas a day, and inhaling. Now I don't do anything anymore. I got bored of always being fucked up on something or other."

On money:

"I was 18 when Sony offered us a deal for BLACK SABBATH. £105 they gave me – and I'd never seen so much cash in my fucking life. From then onwards, I could get drunk morning, noon and night, and nobody would care. There isn't another job in the world where you can turn up pissed as a wheel and not get fired."

On his wife/manager Sharon:

"If it weren't for her, without a shadow of a doubt, I would be dead. My lady's the greatest; I love her. For some reason, the shoe still fits, you know? We fight, of course. You meet these people who have been married 27 years and claim never to have had a cross word: well, I think they must have been living in different countries. Sometimes I look at Sharon and think 'Oh, for fuck's sake, why did I ever look at you to begin with?'"

On how Sharon has retained tight control of her husband's image:

"If I have a pimple on my face, she'll get the doctor round and the pair of them will sit there discussing how to deal with it."

On whether he has had any cosmetic surgery done:

"Oh yeah: I've had my double chin removed, and the fat Hoovered out from around my jawline. But I've never had Botox. My philosophy is that if something makes you unhappy every time you look in the mirror, just do something about it. But it's like tattoos. Once you have one, you have two… Look at Michael Jackson: by the end, his sister La Toya looked more like him than he did."

On what he could possibly have left to wish for:

"A Number One album would be good, and to have a movie made of the book, maybe with Johnny Depp playing me — I'd like that. But really I'd like to go back in time and make better choices. Still, I now know that there is no such place as Utopia. Hell, even if I do make it to heaven, you can bet your life that the toilet will stink."

Read more from Telegraph.co.uk.