WANT TO SEE THE DOLPHINS?

There was a lot going on in Ozzy Osbourne’s world in the autumn of 2001. Fresh off the ongoing Ozzfest tour, with a reunited Black Sabbath headlining, he’d got home to find out that Sharon had signed up him and his family to a new reality TV show called The Osbournes that would be broadcast the following spring. “She just told me as soon as I got home that the deal was all done. I knew nothing about it,” he'd said, clearly bemused.

- Words: Philip Wilding

Which is partly why we were in Malibu. Ozzy and his family had temporarily vacated their house in Beverly Hills, which would become the backdrop for three torrid years of making the show, while it was being overhauled in preparation for shooting the first episode.

It was October 2001. Just a month earlier, Ozzy had been in Manhattan when the 9/11 attacks happened. He recalled stepping out onto the steps of his hotel and staring at the empty city, half-expecting some tumbleweed to roll past: “Sharon got on the phone and got us a tour bus,” Ozzy said. “There was nothing moving in or out of the city. The next morning we drove all the way across America to get back here.”