On the road with Ozzy Osbourne

In the week’s Spectator, the Diary is written by the Prince of Darkness himself. He claims that his new album, Scream, has “gone into the Top Ten of the album charts in seven different countries this week. Not bad for a 61-year-old with five grandkids, eh?”

He says he no longer takes drugs apart from the medicinal kind, and is more or less vegetarian But:

Even though I’ve given up the booze, I can still find ways to terrorise the people of England. For example, this is my first summer in the UK since passing my driving test — it took me 19 attempts — and I’ve bought one of those new Audi R8s to celebrate. Well, the car I actually ordered won’t be ready till August, so they’ve lent me this ‘metal grey’ demonstrator to blast around in while the other one gets shipped over from the factory. I hope they’re not expecting to get it back in one piece. Having said that, I’m a much better driver than I used to be — mainly ’cos I ain’t on a lethal combination of mind-altering drugs 24 hours a day any more. I remember on one occasion in the 1970s, around the time my old band Black Sabbath was just taking off, I tried to calm my nerves before one of my many driving tests by taking a fistful of sedatives then smoking my way through half a brick of Afghan hash. It relaxed me, all right: when I stopped at the first red light, I nodded off. By the time I finally woke up, a little red-faced bloke from the DVLA was whacking me over the head with his clipboard and shouting, ‘FAIL!’