“'OSBOURNE!’ he shouted. ‘YOU’RE A DISGRACE TO YOURSELF AND TO THIS SCHOOL. BRING ME A SHOE.’The room went so quiet you could have heard a mouse fart.”

“My father always said I would do something big one day.‘I’ve got a feeling about you, John Osbourne,’ he’d tell me, after he’d had a few beers.‘You’re either going to do something very special, or you’re going to go to prison.’And he was right, my old man.I was in prison before my eighteenth birthday.”

“I’m not so comfortable with politicians. Meeting them always just feels weird and a bit creepy, no matter who it is. For example, I met Tony Blair during The Osbournes period at this thing called the Pride of Britain Awards. He was all right, I suppose; very charming. But I couldn’t get over the fact that our young soldiers were dying out in the Middle East and he could still find the time to hang around with pop stars.Then he came over to me and said, ‘I was in a rock’n’roll band once, y’know?’I said, ‘So I believe, Prime Minister.’‘But I could never work out the chords to “Iron Man”.’I wanted to say, ‘F**k me, Tony, that’s a staggering piece of information, that is. I mean, you’re at war with Afghanistan, people are getting blown up all over the place, so who honestly gives a f**k that you could never work out the chords to “Iron Man”?’But they’re all the same, so there’s no point getting wound up about it.”

“If you’re determined to commit suicide, you’ll blow your brains out or you’ll jump off a tall building. You’ll do something that you can’t take back, in other words. When you ‘try to kill yourself’ by taking too many pills – like I did – you know you’re probably gonna get found by someone. So all you’re doing is sending a message.”

“‘In 1968, John Osbourne was an up-and-coming rock ’n’ roll star,’ I would say in this fake movie-announcer voice as I wandered around the house. ‘In 1969, he was an up-and-coming garbageman.’”

“I was fifteen when I left school. And what did I get to show for my ten years in the British education system? A piece of paper which said:John Osbourne attended Birchfield Road Secondary Modern.Signed, Mr Oldham (Headmaster)That was f**king it. Not a single qualification. Nothing. I had two career choices: manual labour or manual labour.”

“I remember coming to in white room, with white walls, and people all around me covered in white sheets and thinking, F**k, I’m in the morgue. Then I heard a hissing noise next to my bed.Pssst, pssst.I looked down and there was this kid holding up a pen and a copy of „Bark at the Moon“.‘Will you sign this for me?’ he asked.‘F**k off,’ I told him. ‘I’m dead.’”