Ozzy Osbourne - Trust Me, I’m Dr. Ozzy

Dear Dr. Ozzy,

Thanks to your medical wisdom I already know your cure for a cold—a Hot Ozzy—but what’s the best way to prevent one?

Your local drug store will sell you any old bollocks to “prevent” a cold—they must make a fortune out of virus season—but the fact is, you’ve just gotta ride it out. There’s no harm in having a Hot Ozzy or two as a precaution, though. If it does nothing else, it’ll make your day at work go by a lot faster.

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

What’s the most effective treatment for the hiccups?

Extreme pain, combined with the element of surprise.

♦ The longest-ever attack of hiccups went on for 68 years—68 fucking years, man!—and was suffered by an American guy named Charles Osborne (no relation). It started in 1922, when he was weighing a hog for slaughter in Iowa, and didn’t stop until 1990. The worst thing is, he dropped dead from an ulcer only a year after he got better. The good news? His hiccups didn’t stop him getting on with his life: he managed to get hitched and have five kids (which proves that anyone can get laid, if they put their mind to it). He was even mentioned in Guinness World Records and Trivial Pursuit. Apparently, this guy hiccupped 40 times a minute in the early days, slowing down to “only” 20 times a minute as he got older. That works out at about 430 million hiccups over his entire life. It’s a good job I never sat next to this guy on a plane, or I’d have pushed him out of the emergency exit after five fucking minutes.

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

What’s the best cure for snoring? I need something to shut up my husband, who sounds like a whale with a foghorn stuck in its throat, before I kick him downstairs to the sofa.

I used to share a room with a guy who had the worst snore in the world, I swear. One night, I got so fed up with him, I filled up a wastepaper basket with water, put it next to his bed, and told him, “One snore, and it’s going over yer head.” And y’know what? It cured him. Or at least he didn’t dare go to sleep until he was pretty fucking sure I’d already nodded off. Having said that, I’m a terrible snorer myself. So is Sharon. Our 17 dogs snore, too. When all of us are in action at the same time, our bedroom must sound like the London Nostril Choir. It’s never bothered me, though. I’m usually asleep.

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

Is it really true that chicken soup can help with congestion?

Yes—especially if you add gasoline. Seriously though, I’ve definitely heard that there’s a special chemical in chicken soup that breaks up all the gunk in your nose, making you breathe a bit easier… but in my experience it only lasts for as long as you’re eating the stuff. It’s more likely the heat of the food that gets the old snot running.

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

What’s the best cure for depression?

It’s tempting to give you a funny response to this, but unfortunately depression ain’t funny: I’ve suffered from it myself. What I did—and what I recommend you do—is talk to your GP. Personally, I’m on a low dose of an anti-depressant called Zoloft (also known as sertraline), and it does the job. Of course, you hear a lot of people say that anti-depressants just put a sticking plaster on the problem, instead of solving the real cause. And they might have a point… but it’s very easy to say that if you ain’t fucking depressed . The only big problem for me with anti-depressants is that they ended my sex life. Trying to get down to some action these days is like trying to raise the Titanic . It would be depressing if I weren’t on anti-depressants. As it is, I don’t give a flying one.

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

Is it true that “onion syrup”—onions cooked with brown sugar or honey—can help with a cough?

No idea. I do know that if you eat enough onions, it’ll cure people from wanting to speak to you again.

1. Which musical instrument allegedly cures “sleep apnoea” (when you don’t breathe properly at night)?

a) A kazoo

b) A didgeridoo

c) An Auto-Tune machine

2. What the fuck is “Peruvian Viagra”?

a) A squished frog

b) A well-trained hamster

c) A rare type of bean

3. The ancient Egyptians treated blindness with…

a) Tickling

b) Sunlight

c) Bat’s blood

4. Which “cure” for AIDS has actually helped spread the disease?

a) Bonking a virgin

b) Putting the condom on your big toe

c) Smothering your private parts in clarified butter

5. In the 1960s, psychiatrists treated alcoholics with…

a) Alcohol

b) LSD

c) Hospital-grade laxatives

One of the saddest questions I’ve ever been asked as Dr. Ozzy came from a middle-aged woman in Worcester—Sally, her name was—who wanted to know if was safe to “Go to work on an egg” (as an old British ad slogan used to say). Someone had told her that yolk was bad news, so she was considering a switch to low-fat bean curds or some bullshit. I could hardly believe it, man. This woman was old enough to remember when it was considered perfectly acceptable to fry bread in lard, or let kids breathe fumes from leaded petrol. And yet she’d convinced herself that one boiled egg was gonna send her to an early grave. I mean, really? Is that how crazy things are now?

The trouble is, it’s so easy to get things out of proportion. I’m guilty of the same thing myself. For example, I recently went through a phase of having egg-white omelettes for lunch as part of a low-calorie diet. Then one day this light blub went off in my head, and I thought to myself, “Y’know what? This tastes like fucking shit .” So I went back to eating normal omelettes, and, low and behold, I didn’t grow five extra bellies overnight. As long as you’re not having a dozen eggs every morning, another dozen for lunch, and another dozen for dinner, what’s the problem? It the same with anything : all you need is a bit of common sense, and chances are, you’ll be fine. [1]