Kelly Osbourne has shared a video of her two-year-old son Sidney biting the head off a toy bat in a Halloween tribute to his grandfather Ozzy.
The Prince of Darkness passed away in July at the age of 76, just 17 days after he played one final show as the frontman of Black Sabbath at a concert at Villa Park in Birmingham.
Friday was the first Halloween since Ozzy died, and in a touching tribute video shared on Kelly’s Instagram and TikTok, she showed Sidney clutching a stuffed bat and ripping its head off with his teeth. “Learned from the greatest, Papa!” she captioned the post, which was soundtracked by Ozzy’s 1980 solo single ‘Crazy Train’.
Watch the video here:
Ozzy Osbourne famously bit off the head of a real bat at a show in Des Moines, Iowa in 1982. The animal was thrown onto the stage by a fan and Ozzy picked it up believing it was made of rubber, before realising that it was the real thing. He was later given a series of rabies shots, which he said “ain’t fun”.
Nevertheless, he remained associated with bat imagery for the rest of his life, and in 2022, it was reported that he wanted to install bat boxes in his Buckinghamshire home in an effort to protect the species.
Kelly got engaged to her partner, Slipknot’s Sid Wilson, backstage at the final Sabbath show, with Ozzy joking during the proposal, “Fuck off! You’re not marrying my daughter.”
She later paid tribute to her father, thanking fans for their “love, support and beautiful messages”, while sharing that she believed she “will not be ok for a while”, but was “holding on tight to the love, the light and the legacy left behind” by her father.
She also accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of Ozzy at the Birmingham Awards last month. “I know that my dad was shining down on us from heaven with pride because being a #Brummy meant more to him than anything,” she said. “He loved the city and he loved the people.”
Two documentaries have been released chronicling the final years of Ozzy’s life, Ozzy: No Escape From Now on Paramount+ and the BBC doc Sharon & Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home, which saw the rock legend reflect on the final Sabbath gig: “What was terribly frustrating for me, I had to sit there instead of running across the stage,” he said. “That was fucking torture, because I wanted to get off that [chair] so much.”
But he added: “It was very humbling, to sit in that chair for nine songs. What a great way to go out, that gig was.”
