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Ozzy Osbourne dies aged 76 just weeks after final Black Sabbath gig

Ozzy Osbourne dies aged 76 just weeks after final Black Sabbath gig

Yahoo4 days ago
Music superstar Ozzy Osbourne has died at the age of 76, just weeks after a Black Sabbath reunion concert held in his home city of Birmingham.
The singer, who had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2019, was 'with his family and surrounded by love'.
A statement said: 'It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning. He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time.'
Ozzy Forever! pic.twitter.com/aJKVOCnJiI
— BlackSabbath (@BlackSabbath) July 22, 2025
Earlier this month, Osbourne bid a farewell to fans with a Black Sabbath reunion, telling thousands of heavy metal enthusiasts at Villa Park, Birmingham – a stone's throw from where Black Sabbath was formed in 1968 – that it was 'so good to be on this stage' as he performed his last set from a large black throne.
Osbourne and his fellow original Black Sabbath members – Tony Iommi, Terence 'Geezer' Butler and Bill Ward – were the last to appear on stage as part of the star-studded line-up for the Back to the Beginning concert.
Bands including Anthrax, Metallica and Guns N' Roses were on the lineup, and there were messages of thanks from other celebrities including Jack Black, Ricky Gervais and Dolly Parton.
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A post shared by YUNGBLUD (@yungblud)
Singer Yungblud, who performed Changes at the concert on July 5, with a recording of the live cover released for charity, paid tribute to Osbourne, calling him 'the greatest of all time'.
In an Instagram post, the singer, whose real name is Dominic Harrison, shared photos of the moment he gave the late heavy metal singer a cross on a necklace, similar to the one Osbourne had previously given to him.
He wrote: 'I didn't think you would leave so soon the last time we met you were so full of life and your laugh filled up the room.
'But as it is written with legends, they seem to know things that we don't. I will never forget you – you will be in every single note I sing and with me every single time I walk on stage.
'Your cross around my neck is the most precious thing I own. You asked me once if there was anything you could do for me and as I said then and as I will say now for all of us the music was enough. You took us on your adventure – an adventure that started it all.
'I am truly heartbroken. You were the greatest of all time.'
Sir Elton John described Osbourne as a 'huge trailblazer' who 'secured his place in the pantheon of rock gods'.
'He was a dear friend and a huge trailblazer who secured his place in the pantheon of rock gods – a true legend,' Sir Elton wrote on Instagram, adding: 'He was also one of the funniest people I've ever met. I will miss him dearly. To Sharon and the family, I send my condolences and love. Elton xx.'
Osbourne's theatrical stage presence, including once biting off the head of a bat and styling himself as the Prince of Darkness, marked him out as a controversial figure.
Born John Michael Osbourne on December 3 1948, in Aston, Birmingham, he left school at 15 and did odd jobs, including factory work, before teaming up with school friend Geezer Butler in several bands.
Black Sabbath went on to become one of the most influential and successful metal bands of all time, selling more than 75 million albums worldwide.
The group were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, and Osbourne was added for a second time last year.
He rose to further fame alongside his wife Sharon – whom he married in 1982 and with whom he has three children, Aimee, Jack and Kelly – through their MTV reality TV series The Osbournes.
In 2020, Osbourne revealed he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and he paused touring in 2023 after extensive spinal surgery.
He had a fall at home in 2019, which aggravated injuries from a near-fatal quad bike crash in 2003, stopping his No More Tours 2 shows from going ahead in Europe and the UK.
The tour had previously been rescheduled several times because of illness, the Covid-19 pandemic and logistical issues.
He told Good Morning America in January 2020 that it was discovered he had the neurodegenerative disorder after a fall.
He said: 'I did my last show New Year's Eve at The Forum. Then I had a bad fall. I had to have surgery on my neck, which screwed all my nerves and I found out that I have a mild form.'
He and wife Sharon, who was also his manager, met when she was 18 and they married on July 4 1982 in Hawaii.
Daughter Kelly, 40, duetted with her father on the UK number one single Changes in 2003.
He released his twelfth studio album Ordinary Man in 2020, followed by Patient Number 9 in 2022, which went to number three and two in the UK charts, respectively.
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London Trans Pride sees ‘record-breaking turnout of 100,000 people'
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London Trans Pride sees ‘record-breaking turnout of 100,000 people'

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Strictly's Punam Krishan opens multi-million pound spa near Glasgow
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Strictly's Punam Krishan opens multi-million pound spa near Glasgow

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The make-believe festival boasting Glastonbury headliners planned by a convicted fraudster
The make-believe festival boasting Glastonbury headliners planned by a convicted fraudster

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"These guys apparently have an £8m budget to do this music festival and he looks like he's just walked out of Wetherspoons," he said. Chris hasn't been paid for his work and has issued court proceedings against Mr Kenny for breach of contract. Elba's agent said there was, "no record of Idris doing anything for this man" and Groove Armada and Whigfield said they were never booked. Genevieve Barker is one of the few people Mr Kenny let into these secretive conversations. "He'd say 'oh my gosh we've got this band, but don't tell anyone'," she recalled. Having spent time raising her five children, the marketing and events specialist in Monmouth felt "lovebombed" into leaving her job to be head of partnerships for the festival. "I'd spent the best part of 16 years raising children," she said. "If you've always been working part time or a stay-at-home parent, this was the career move of a lifetime." She said the "larger than life" businessman offered her more money than she'd ever made, as well as a pension and private dental and healthcare cover for her family. But after she started working for the festival, she said it was, "like a toxic relationship". She added: "He made us feel really special, dangled a couple of carrots, but then isolated us. He never encouraged us to talk as a group unless he was there." Another Monmouth Rising employee works for festivals over the summer. As a part-time carer she said she jumped at the chance for a longer-term gig working from home. She does not want to be named for fear of not getting work in a struggling industry that is "already difficult for older women". She says that a 10-minute job interview saw Mr Kenny run through "loads of bands that he was in talks with, so fast that I couldn't write them down. Then he said yes to everything I asked for". Various suppliers also told us they provided thousands of pounds worth of work and were promised thousands more in future. The BBC has seen WhatsApp chats where Monmouth Rising's employees spoke excitedly about the plans. But, out of the blue in late February, a new message appeared. "Where is our pay?" Employees had woken up to find they had not received their first pay packet. The festival's website was down and they couldn't access work emails. The Loyalty Co founder Adam Purslow said his firm built the website at a cut-price rate for his "serial entrepreneur" friend Mr Kenny. After numerous requests for payment, Adam pulled the website when his team were presented with a "fishy" looking document as proof of incoming funding. "All the suppliers started to question how genuine that whole thing was," he said. Employees like Genevieve had mortgages, rent and nursery bills to pay. In response to her desperate appeals, Mr Kenny sent her videos, filmed in his mum's home where he was living, claiming he was "literally just waiting" for money to come in. BBC Wales has discovered this money Mr Kenny was promising was a £90,000 cash advance, known as invoice funding. But it was turned down because it failed due diligence checks. This was because an invoice from train company GWR, which Mr Kenny handed over as proof of incoming funds, was flagged as a potential forgery. GWR said it was unable to match the invoice to its records and "immediately reported" its suspicions to British Transport Police. It is not the only alleged forged document Mr Kenny appears to have relied upon. Mr Kenny previously tried and failed to deliver a city-wide cocktail festival and a similar pattern of promises and alleged forgeries followed in its wake. In 2021 he started working for Kate and James, a couple who ran a cocktail bar in Chester and did backstage catering for celebrity-packed events such as the National Television Awards (NTAs). The couple, who now live in Morocco, said Mr Kenny "always liked shiny things" and was excited when they invited him to work at the NTAs, although "the reality is, it's hard work and you're just clearing up after famous people, rather than ordinary people". Kate said Mr Kenny also told them he had dated a famous actress and TV presenter after meeting her at a hotel bar he ran in Liverpool, despite there being no suggestion he had. "We then found out he had been telling people he runs the NTA party," said Kate. "We felt sorry for him." Kate said Mr Kenny always knew the "right name to drop" and persuaded the couple to invest with him in a new Liverpool Cocktail Week. But his money he promised wasn't forthcoming and the event never happened, leaving the couple £20,000 out of pocket. In an attempt to explain the delay in paying up, Mr Kenny presented the couple with a £40,000 loan agreement from Metro Bank. A month later when that money didn't materialise, he shared a letter from the same bank saying his account had been erroneously suspended for potential fraudulent activity. The loan offer had inexplicably risen to £75,000 and it referenced another £35,000 from an investor in Malta. The couple confronted Mr Kenny in a phone call, but said he never paid them. It wasn't the last time Mr Kenny claimed funds were coming from someone in Malta. When Mr Purslow asked for payment this year, Mr Kenny sent a screenshot, seen by the BBC, of an international money transfer for £200,000 from a bank in Malta, but the name was misspelled. When we asked the bank about the document, it said it was "not legitimate". We also contacted the people Mr Kenny said he had been speaking to about investing in the festival. Mr Vincent said he had never met him while two of the original Creamfields founders and current owners all said they had never heard of him. The Welsh government said it had never done an economic impact assessment. The Killers and Def Leppard said they had never been asked to perform. We have yet to hear back from The Libertines, Wet Leg and Pulp. Other bands said they had been asked, but deposits were never paid. With six months to go until the festival, Monmouth Rising looked to be sinking. Genevieve said, with traders asking for their money back, she felt "morally obliged" to challenge Mr Kenny but he would not listen. Then, on 6 March, he posted an open letter on social media cancelling the festival because, he said, it was "no longer viable" but still hoped it would run in 2026. He said all ticket holders and vendors would receive refunds but BBC Wales has been told only 24 people had bought tickets and all were refunded because their payments had been held by the ticketing company. Many traders we spoke to said they were yet to get their deposits back. Monmouth Rising would have cost millions to pull off from a standing start. The company due to provide the festival with hydrogen power said it entered into a commercial supply agreement but no work had been done. BBC Wales said it had never been approached to broadcast from the festival. We have also found - far from being software used to plan the Paris Olympics - the site plan was drawn up using an online app offering free trials. Suppliers and employees, including Mr Whitehouse, Mr Purslow and Ms Barker said they were thousands of pounds out of pocket and attempts to start legal proceedings against Mr Kenny stalled after he cancelled his phone number and moved addresses. The woman who had the 10-minute interview said she was left penniless and unable to claim Universal Credit for months because HMRC thought she had been paid. We tracked down Mr Kenny on his new phone number in order to put these allegations to him. He said the line-up was real and he spent a year working on Monmouth Rising, adding it was "the only thing I focused on". He indicated he did pay some employees and said those who lost money could contact him directly, adding he has "never hidden away from anything". He wouldn't tell us where he's now living or answer our questions about the alleged forgeries, or the investors he claimed he had, and asked us to email him with our questions instead. He didn't respond to those questions in detail, but in a statement he said his "sole motivation" was to create something meaningful and that it came at personal cost to his health and finances. He said it fell apart when he realised he wouldn't be able to get permission for an event of that size at Monmouth Showground. Monmouthshire council told us, in the 12 months he claimed he spent planning the festival, he only had one meeting with them. He added that he was truly repentant, promising directly to those affected: "I will repay you." Questions are now being asked about how this was able to progress as far as it did. James Kenny is a named director of dozens of small companies under different versions of his name, leaving £27,000 in unpaid County Court Judgements behind him. In 2008, he was convicted of two counts of fraud for forging his wife's signature to obtain a mortgage payment to clear £15,000 worth of debts. No-one can know what motivated Mr Kenny to build a festival based on lies, but very few of those we have spoken to believe Monmouth Rising would ever have worked. Genevieve, who is still owed £5,000 and has only just got another job, said she thinks Mr Kenny is "a fantasist and a narcissist". "I mean, this was meant to be a multi-million pound event and he set up his office at his mother's kitchen table," she said. "He fooled all of us." Additional reporting by Charlie O'Keeffe Elsewhere on the BBC Fans electric as Oasis kick off reunion tour in Cardiff 'We wanted to write a song that would be fantastic forever' Why Ruth Jones accepted Nessa's Bafta in bare feet

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