"Who would you rather sleep with, Ozzy or Geezer?": Smuggling, private jets, and expecting the unexpected with the Osbournes

"If you absolutely had to,” a tipsy Sharon Osbourne asks me sweetly, “who would you rather sleep with – my husband or her husband?”

It’s late evening in early April 2001, and I’m in a hotel room in LA with Sharon Osbourne and Gloria Butler, the wives and managers, respectively, of Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler. Black Sabbath are in town to play the first-ever ESPN Action Sports And Music Award at the Universal Amphitheater, and I’ve been flown over here to cover the event and interview Ozzy for Kerrang! magazine. I hadn’t been briefed that sleeping with one of the Godfathers of Metal would be part of the assignment. When around the Osbournes, however, you should expect the unexpected.

I first met Ozzy, Sharon and their kids in May 1999, in West Palm Beach, Florida, at the opening date of the Ozzfest 1999 tour, which Sabbath were headlining. The following day we flew to Atlanta on Sabbath’s private jet, Sharon having freed up seats for photographer Ross Halfin and I by asking Jack and Kelly to travel on the Sabbath crew bus. If you’ve had posters of Sabbath on your bedroom wall as a teenager, as I had, nothing quite prepares you for when Ozzy Osbourne calls you by your first name and offers you an in-flight beer.

I got to spend quite a bit of time with Ozzy in the years that followed, mainly in Los Angeles, often at his family home. Occasionally I’d be thrown a curve ball ahead of the trip – I distinctly remember being asked to bring a bespoke goldcross necklace made for Ozzy by ‘King Of Bling’ Theo Fennell on a transatlantic flight, and silently praying that US immigration officers wouldn’t question why I was accessorising a five-quid charity shop shirt with an item of jewellery worth more than £10,000 – but interviewing Ozzy was always an absolute joy, with a constant flow of Birmingham-accented swear words used as punctuation in wholly unprintable, hilariously indiscreet anecdotes.

Before MTV’s cameras brought the Osbourne family’s unique dynamics to the world via The Osbournes, witnessing the warmth, wit and love shared by the family firsthand was a genuine privilege

In May 2018 I was invited to join Ozzy for shows in Mexico City and Santiago, Chile, on what would prove to be his final tour, mischievously titled No More Tours 2 as a knowing wink to the Prince Of Darkness’s 1992 ‘retirement’ tour.

Ozzy was in a black mood in Mexico, convinced that the tour was “cursed” – after their flight touched down in the country’s capital, Mrs O had to travel straight back to LA because she’d forgotten her passport, and, with a combination of the high altitude and bronchitis affecting his breathing, Ozzy had problems with his voice during his headline performance at the Heaven And Hell Festival.

“It was not my intention to sing like a fucking asshole!” he told me. “In my head I want to give them everything, but it don’t work sometimes. If I can’t do it on stage and I’m not having fun with it, I get fucking angry with myself. But I’m only human, you know?”

In Chile, however, everything came together perfectly, and Ozzy was jubilant after a killer gig. “That was good, wasn’t it?” he said, smiling broadly, when he spotted me post-show, his pride in still being able to entertain a crowd some 50 years after he first stepped on a stage tangible. This would be the last time I saw Ozzy, and the last words I’d hear from him face-to-face. I’ll take that as a final memory.

For the record, back in 2001, my answer to Sharon Osbourne’s cackling enquiry was Geezer Butler, my logic, as I explained at the time, being that at least I’d be able to chat about recent football results with Sabbath’s bassist after the dirty deed. Don’t worry, Ozzy, you missed absolutely nothing. But we’ll miss you forever. R.I.P.