“The funny thing about getting married in America was that we needed to get a blood test before they’d give us a licence. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the bloke from the lab had called back and said, ‘Mr Osbourne, we appear to have found some blood in your alcohol.’”

“I even tried to join the army, but they wouldn’t have me. The bloke in the uniform took one look at my ugly mug and said, ‘Sorry, we want subjects, not objects'.”

“I stomped down the hallway, twisted the latch on the front door, and yanked it open.‘Are you… “Ozzy Zig”?’ said Guy Fawkes, in a thick Brummie accent.‘Who wants to know?’ I said, folding my arms.‘Terry Butler,’ he said. ‘I saw your ad.’That was exactly what I’d hoped he was going to say. Truth was, I’d been waiting a long time for this moment. I’d dreamed about it. I’d fantasised about it. I’d had conversations with myself on the shitter about it. One day, I thought, people might write newspaper articles about my ad in the window of Ringway Music, saying it was the turning point in the life of John Michael Osbourne, ex-car horn tuner. ‘Tell me, Mr Osbourne,’ I’d be asked by Robin Day on the BBC, ‘when you were growing up in Aston, did you ever think that a simple advert in a music shop window would lead to you becoming the fifth member of the Beatles, and your sister Iris getting married to Paul McCartney?’And I’d answer, ‘Never in a million years, Robin, never in a million years.’It was a f**king awesome ad.”

“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.”

“The funny thing is, I’m actually quite interested in the Bible, and I’ve tried to read it several times. But I’ve only ever got as far as the bit about Moses being 720 years old, and I’m like, `What were these people smoking back then?’ The bottom line is I don’t believe in a bloke called God in a white suit who sits on a fluffy cloud any more than I believe in a bloke called the Devil with a three-pronged fork and a couple of horns. But I believe that there’s day, there’s night, there’s good, there’s bad, there’s black, there’s white. If there is a God, it’s nature. If there’s a Devil, it’s nature.”

“‘And what about a [band] name?’ said Tony [Iommi]. The three of us looked at each other.‘We should all take a couple of days to think about it,’ I said. ‘I dunno about you two, but I’ve got a special place where I go to get ideas for important stuff like this. It’s never failed me yet.’Forty-eight hours later I blurted out: ‘I’ve got it!’‘Must have been that dodgy bird you poked the other night,’ said Geezer. ‘Has your whelk turned green yet?’ Tony and Bill snickered into their plates of egg and chips. We were sitting in a greasy spoon caff in Aston. So far, everyone was getting along famously.‘Very funny, Geezer,’ I said, waving an eggy fork at him. ‘I mean the name for our band.’The snickering died down.‘Go on then,’ said Tony [Iommi].‘Well, I was on the shitter last night, and...'‘That’s your special place?’ spluttered Bill, blobs of mushed-up egg and HP sauce flying out of his mouth.‘Where the f**k did you think it was, Bill?’ I said. ‘The hanging gardens of f**king Babylon?”

“It’s funny, you learn a lot about people when you’re on the road like that. Every morning, for example, Bill would have a cup of coffee, a glass of orange juice, a glass of milk, and a beer. Always in the same order. I asked him why he did it once.‘Well,’ he said, ‘the coffee’s to wake me up, the orange juice is to give me some vitamins to stop me getting sick, the milk’s to coat my stomach for the rest of the day, and the beer’s to put me back to sleep again.’”