Ozzy Osbourne - I Am Ozzy

I’ve never seen them again to this day.

And, as time went on, things got even crazier. At one point—don’t ask me why—I started to wear medical uniforms all the time. My assistant, David Tangye, bought them for me. You’d see us staggering up and down these country lanes between the pubs, out of our minds on booze, dope, acid—you name it—wearing these green American-style scrubs, with stethoscopes around our necks.

Every once in a while, the lads from Led Zeppelin would also come over to Bulrush Cottage. Robert Plant didn’t live too far away, actually, and I’d go over to his place, too. I remember one night at Plant’s house—not long after we’d got back from Bel Air—I taught him how to play seven-card stud. That was a big fucking mistake. As I explained the rules, he said he wanted to place bets—‘just to see how it works, y’know?’—and then he kept raising the stakes. I was just beginning to think what a fucking idiot he must be when he pulled out a royal flush, and I had to give him fifty quid.

He fleeced me, the cheeky bastard.

After a few nights out with Zeppelin, I worked out that their drummer, John Bonham, was as fucking nuts as I was, so we’d spend most of the time trying to outcrazy each other. That was always the way with me, y’know? I’d try to win people over with my craziness, like I had in the playground at Birchfield Road. But, of course, behind the mask there was a sad old clown most of the time. Bonham was the same, I think.

He would just drink himself to fucking bits. One time, we got his assistant, a guy called Matthew, to drive us to a club in Birmingham in my car. But when it was time to go home, Bonham was so pissed, he thought it was his car, so he locked all the doors from inside and wouldn’t let me in. I ended up standing in the car park shouting, ‘John, this is my car. Open the door!’

‘Fuck off,’ he said, through the window, as Matthew revved the engine.

‘John, for crying out—’

‘I said fuck off.’

‘BUT THIS IS MY CAR!’

Then something finally clicked inside his head. ‘Well, you should fucking get in then, shouldn’t you?’ he said.

Even though I was pissed all the time in the seventies, the one thing I really wanted to do more than just about anything was get my driving licence. And fucking hell, man, I tried. I took my test more times than I can remember while I lived at Bulrush Cottage—and I failed every time. I’d just get intimidated, y’know? After my first couple of attempts, I started to go down to the Hand & Cleaver beforehand to sort out my nerves, but more often than not I’d end up being shitfaced by the time I got in the car with the examiner, and then I’d drive like a cunt. Then I thought the problem might be the car, so I called Patrick Meehan’s office and asked for a Range Rover to replace the Merc. When that didn’t work, I asked for a Jag. But it was a V12, so every time I put my foot down, I woke up in a hedge.

Eventually I took the test in a Roller.

That didn’t work, either.

Finally I went to the doctor and asked for some pills to calm me down, so he wrote me a prescription for a sedative. On the box, it said, ‘DO NOT MIX WITH ALCOHOL’, which was like showing a red rag to a bull as far as I was concerned. Still, I managed to limit myself to only three or four pints that day. Unfortunately, that just meant I smoked twice as much Afghan hash. The good news was that when I got into the car with the examiner, I didn’t feel intimated at all. The bad news was that when I stopped for the first traffic light, I nodded off.

I gave up on the tests after that, but I kept driving anyway. Whenever I gave anyone a ride, they’d ask, ‘Do you have a licence yet?’ and I’d answer, ‘Oh yeah, of course.’

Which was sort of true.

I had a TV licence.

But I didn’t want to push my luck too far, so I started trying to come up with other ways of getting around.

Which is why I ended up getting a horse.

Now, I’m generally not cool with horses—they don’t have brakes and they’ve got their own brains. But I was bored of going down to the Hand & Cleaver on my lawnmower, so I went to see a dealer and said, ‘Look, can you get me a horse that’s a bit on the lazy side?’

A few days later, this chick turned up at the cottage with this pure white gelding—a male with its nuts chopped off—called Turpin. ‘He’s very laid back,’ she told me. ‘He won’t give you any trouble at all. The only things he doesn’t like are very loud hissing noises—like the air brakes on a truck. But you won’t get anything like that around here.’

‘Oh no,’ I said, laughing. ‘It’s very quiet out here in Ranton.’

So I called Patrick Meehan’s office to get him to send the breeder some dough, and that was that: I was the proud owner of one lazy horse. I kept him at the farm up the road, because they had a little paddock and someone who could feed him and clean out his stable.

Of course, the second I got Turpin I thought I was John Wayne. I started riding him up and down Butt Lane, wearing a cowboy hat and this leather shirt that I’d bought in LA, singing the theme to Rawhide. After a few days of that I started to feel pretty comfortable in the saddle, so one lunchtime I decided to take him past the Hand & Cleaver to show the locals, and maybe stop off for a cheeky one at the same time. Off we went down Butt Lane, clippety-clop, clippety-clop. Now, that summer, the Hand & Cleaver had put these picnic tables outside, so I knew I’d have an audience. And I couldn’t wait to see everyone’s jaws drop when I turned up.

On I went, clippety-clop, clippety-clop.

Two minutes later, I’d arrived.

Sure enough, all these people were sitting outside with their pints and their bags of pork scratchings, and they started oohing and ahhing when they saw this beautiful white horse.

Then I pulled on the reins to get Turpin to stop, and started to dismount. But just as I was about to swing my leg over the saddle, a milk delivery truck came around the bend. At first, I ignored it—that truck used to drive up Butt Lane every week—but then a thought popped into my head: I hope that thing doesn’t have air bra—

TTSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHH went the truck.

The second those air brakes went off, Turpin’s ears went back and he took off like a fucking Grand National winner. First he bolted in the direction of the truck, with me hanging on to the saddle for dear life, one foot out of the stirrups, my cowboy hat dangling from my neck by the strap. Then he realised he was going in the wrong direction, so he turned around and started galloping back towards the farm. He charged past the Hand & Cleaver at such a fucking speed, the faces of the people outside were just a blur. Meanwhile, I was screaming at the top of my lungs, ‘Staaarghp! You fucker! Staaarghp!’ Which is exactly what he did, as soon as he got back to his paddock—he stopped dead, sending me flying over his head and a fence.

I landed in a cowpat.

Turpin got a new owner after that.

Then, a few days later, I killed the vicar. Or at least I thought I did.

It was an accident.

You see, in those days, out in the countryside, vicars would make house calls. They didn’t need a reason to come and see you. You’d just hear a knock on your door and there would be a bloke in his frock and his dog collar, wanting to talk about the weather.

So one day, while I was down the pub, the vicar came round to Bulrush Cottage for one of his visits, and Thelma invited him in for a cup of tea. The trouble was, Bulrush Cottage wasn’t set up for entertaining vicars—there were beer cans and shotguns and bongs all over the place—and Thelma didn’t have a clue what to feed him, either. So she rummaged around in the kitchen until she found this nasty-looking cake in an old tin. With no better option, she gave him a slice, even though it looked and tasted like shit.