Watch: Ozzy Osbourne joins Black Sabbath on stage in final show weeks before singer's death
The 76-year-old, whose death was announced on Tuesday (22 July), joined his Black Sabbath bandmates at a huge event held in their hometown of Birmingham earlier this month.
Ozzy performed some of his biggest solo hits from a black-winged throne during his final public appearance at Villa Park on 5 July.
'It's so good to be on this f***ing stage, you have no idea,' he told fans during the show.
News of his death was announced by his family, who said in a statement he was 'with his family and surrounded by love.'
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Daily Mail
28 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
PETA slammed over Ozzy Osbourne tribute praising his love for animals: 'Bats would like a word'
Amid the flood of tributes to Ozzy Osbourne after his death at 76 this week, one has been met by a deluge of scathing backlash. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), who are famous for publicly slamming celebrities they feel are cruel to wildlife, issued a warm statement in which they saluted Ozzy for 'the gentle side he showed to animals.' The testimonial came 43 years after he bit the head off a live bat during a Black Sabbath concert in Iowa, a moment that passed instantly into showbiz history. Ozzy subsequently insisted he believed the bat was made out of rubber when a fan threw it onstage at him, and he has expressed regret at how the drunken stunt snowballed into an indelible part of his legacy. He once ruefully observed: 'Whatever else I do, my epitaph will be: "Born December 3, 1948. Died, whenever. And he bit the head off a bat."' In light of the incident, PETA 's memorial tweet to Ozzy came in for blistering mockery from fans, one of whom joked that bats 'would like a word.' 'How dare you! He killed a bat on stage by biting off it's head! How do you support such things!?!?!?' another X user exclaimed in the replies. 'I honestly thought this was a satire account posting this,' gasped a third, while a fourth posted a meme of a bat saying: 'Are you kidding me?' Some social media users reacted with hilarity, posting replies like: 'RI-PETA' and: 'The person who wrote this post was born after the 80s.' 'Don't bats lives matter?' demanded an X user, as another sarcastically wrote: 'Be more like Ozzie, bite the heads off of live bats.' 'I had to check this was not the Onion twice,' admitted a fan, while another was left wondering: 'Are you serious or is this about to lead to a bat controversy?' PETA's tribute made no mention of the bat incident at all, focusing instead on Ozzy's animal rights activism in recent years, particularly a campaign he collaborated with the pressure group on in the early 2010s. 'Ozzy Osbourne was a legend and a provocateur, but PETA will remember the 'Prince of Darkness' most fondly for the gentle side he showed to animals - most recently cats, by using his fame to decry painful, crippling declawing mutilations,' they said. 'Ozzy may have been the singer, but his wife, Sharon, and his daughter, Kelly, were of one voice when it meant protecting animals. Ozzy will be missed by animal advocates the world over,' the statement concluded. PETA and Ozzy's crusade against cat-declawing included a poster of the rocker with his fingertips severed, blood gushing down his hands. 'Amputating a cat's toes is twisted and wrong,' Ozzy said at the time. 'If your couch is more important to you than your cat's health and happiness, you don't deserve to have an animal! Get cats a scratching post - don't mutilate them for life.' Ozzy's wife Sharon also worked with PETA on an anti-fur video and donated her personal collection of fur coats to the organization, while their daughter Kelly has posed for the outfit's 'Save the Seals' initiative. The musician's PETA activism came near the end of a relationship with animals that markedly evolved over the course of his life. During his early years, Ozzy dropped out of school at the age of 15 and drifted between a string of odd jobs including one in a slaughterhouse. After he became a rock star, he and Sharon owned a sprawling clowder of cats, but at the height of his addictions he massacred them in a drug-induced frenzy. 'I was taking drugs so much I was a f***ed. The final straw came when I shot all our cats,' he recalled later, placing the incident in the early 1980s. 'We had about 17, and I went crazy and shot them all. My wife found me under the piano in a white suit – a shotgun in one hand and a knife in the other.' In 1981, one year before the notorious bat incident, Ozzy also bit the head off a dove during a meeting with CBS, though various versions of the story contain conflicting accounts of whether the bird was alive at the time. Ozzy told biographer Nick Wall that he had planned to bring three live doves to the meeting in order to release them there as a peace symbol. Instead, having guzzled brandy all morning, he got so fed up of a chattering PR professional at CBS that he 'pulled out one of these doves and bit its f***ing head off just to shut her up,' he said for the book Black Sabbath: Symptoms of the Universe. 'Then I did it again with the next dove, spitting the head out on the table,' Ozzy added. 'That's when they threw me out. They said I'd never work for CBS again.' His fauna-related antics during his drug years included snorting a trail of ants while on tour with Motley Crue and talking to a horse for an hour while under the influence of LSD, the latter episode prompting him to give up that particular substance. After he was jettisoned from Black Sabbath in 1979 over his spiraling addictions, he embarked on a 1981 solo tour and developed a habit of flinging 'bits of meat and animal parts into the audience,' Ozzy shared. 'I thought it was hilarious.' Members of the crowd responded by throwing back 'sheep testicles, live snakes, dead rats, all kinds of things,' he recalled. 'Someone once threw a live frog onstage. It was the biggest frog I'd ever seen, and it landed on its back.' He grew gentler in later life, and his affection for his pet cats was memorably documented on his hit reality show The Osbournes. In one clip that repeatedly went viral in recent years, Ozzy was seen clambering up onto a dressing table to retrieve a cat that had scurried to the top of the mirror frame. As members of his family shrieked in panic, he grew increasingly exasperated and started upbraiding them to 'shut the f*** up' and 'stop screaming.' He died this week surrounded by his loved ones after a years-long battle with Parkinson's disease, eliciting a worldwide outpouring of grief. Tributes abounded from fans and friends - and even from the Alamo, decades after he urinated on its cenotaph and was banned from the city of San Antonio before publicly apologizing and eventually revisiting the landmark in 2016.
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The more comical the action at women's Euros, the more woke BBC get – one pundit's pearl of wisdom was red card offence
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The Independent
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20 years ago, 'Hogan Knows Best' premiered. Read our 2005 interview with Hulk Hogan
They were icons of the 1980s, known for their outlandish exploits onstage and in the ring, who later redefined their images in the 2000s by starring alongside their families in reality shows. And, this week, both Ozzy Osbourne and Hulk Hogan died. Hogan lived a lot of lives before his death Thursday at 71. He was a professional wrestler who helped transform the WWE into a lucrative cultural behemoth. He appeared in TV shows and movies — including 'Rocky III' — and provided voices for video games. His victory in his lawsuit against Gawker Media essentially killed the powerful online news and gossip purveyor and heightened tensions around press freedoms and privacy rights. A racial slurs scandal saw the WWE cut ties with him, and though the organization later welcomed him back into the fold, he pursued new pro wrestling ventures. Of late, he was somewhat of a political figure, too, embracing President Donald Trump and even speaking at the 2024 Republican National Convention. But 20 years ago, Hogan was sitting in a New York conference room with The Associated Press, his two teenagers and then-wife, Linda Hogan. The quartet was about to hit stardom as a family, with the impending premiere of their VH1 reality show 'Hogan Knows Best,' which would run for four seasons. The resulting story, written by AP journalist Derrik J. Lang, was published July 7, 2005, under the headline 'Hulk Hogan, Family United in Dysfunction.' You can read it as it ran, below. ___ The similarities between Ozzy Osbourne's family and Terry 'Hulk' Hogan's bleached-blond brood are as striking as the wrestling legend's famous leg drop finishing move. Hogan, 51, is the only seasoned celebrity among his family of four, just like Ozzy. Daughter Brooke, 16, is an aspiring music star, just like Kelly. Son Nick, 14, is rebellious and slightly apathetic, just like Jack. And wife Linda seems to be the true ringleader of the household, just like - you guessed it - Sharon. Of course, the tanned and rowdy Hogan family, stars of the upcoming VH1 reality show 'Hogan Knows Best,' would like to think otherwise. 'Our intensity isn't madness,' insists Hogan, clad in his trademark do-rag while sitting with his family in a conference room high above Times Square. 'We are a united front here.' The Hogans - who've ditched their real name Bollea in favor of dad's stage name - are certainly united in the acceptance of their dysfunction and drive to become superstars. They often spat, but the feuds never reach the expletive-filled bluntness of the Osbournes. 'We're the clean version of 'The Osbournes,'' says Nick. As the 'Real American Hero,' Hogan dominated the wrestling world in the 1980s, way before anybody ever smelled what The Rock was cookin'. Known for addressing everyone as 'brother' and tearing his yellow Hulkamania shirt with his bare hands, Hogan usually was an absentee daddy because of his demanding traveling schedule. 'We went out of our way to be regular,' says Linda. 'He would change his schedule around to try to be the soccer dad. Little by little, he started spending more time at home. He didn't like being on the road as much anymore.' Before fatherhood, Hogan often advised little Hulkamaniacs to say their prayers and take their vitamins. With his own kids, curfews are enforced, drugs are a no-no and dating is off-limits - although he did let a 22-year-old friend of the family take Brooke out on her first date after grilling the guy on his sexual history. The experience, which Brooke calls 'totally embarrassing,' is captured in the first episode. Linda says when Brooke and Nick would act up as youngsters, it wasn't the Hulkster who'd lay the smackdown. 'Our house is full of antiques,' she explains. 'I have this one section in the living room that looks like an English riding setup so I've got the old English leather boots and the caps and the switch that I used to smack their fannies with. It's got this little leather loop on the end of it.' Now that they're teenagers, dad says Nick is the naughtier kid; mom says Brooke. 'Mom?' Brooke whines in reply. 'Why me? I'm a virgin. I don't do drugs. I'm perfect. I'm nice to people. I always did my homework.' Despite the strictness, Linda and Hulk are supportive of Nick and Brooke's extracurricular activities. Nick's into cars. Brooke's into being a star. She wants to ride her dad's do-rag tails to Britneydom. After going through what Hogan calls a 'boot camp' with boy-band impresario Lou Pearlman, Brooke ditched the producer and is recording a debut album on her own. 'They were exposed to behind-the-scenes from early on,' says Linda. 'They grew up thinking that's the norm, that you're backstage, not in the audience.' 'I can't imagine just doing a normal job,' says Brooke. Using his fame, Hulk is giving Brooke a big push. The pair popped up at this year's Grammys and starred in the VH1 special 'Hulk Hogan, Stage Dad,' the precursor to 'Hogan Knows Best.' Hulk is afraid of Brooke receiving the Lindsay Lohan tabloid treatment, but it's all part of the job. 'I know I can handle it,' says the bubbly Brooke. Although Hulk is the star of 'Hogan Knows Best,' which premieres 10 p.m. EDT Sunday, boosting Brooke's pop career was the main motivation for allowing producers and camera crews to invade their 18,000-square-foot home in Belleair, Fla. 'We want to be on an even playing field,' says Hogan, citing the surge Ashlee Simpson's reality show gave her debut album. 'Terry and I knew about the reality side of having a reality TV show,' says Linda. 'It's in your face. It's four months of having no privacy.' 'You just can't stay on guard for 24 hours a day,' says Hulk. 'There was an effort for a couple of days for me to keep the rag on my head. Screw it. Who cares if the bald head is hanging out?'
