Trust Me, I'm Dr. Ozzy: Advice from Rock's Ultimate Survivor
Category: Books,Biographies & Memoirs,Arts & Literature
Trust Me, I'm Dr. Ozzy: Advice from Rock's Ultimate Survivor Details
About the Author Ozzy Osbourne was born in Aston, Birmingham, in 1948. He has sold over a hundred million records both with Black Sabbath and as a Grammy Award-winning solo artist. He has five children and lives with his wife, Sharon, in California and Buckinghamshire. Read more
Reviews
That loveable madman Ozzy Osbourne is back with his second non-fiction book. And while I don't really like the title so much, it's good fun to read even if it's not as informative as his autobiography (how could it be? this is a book for curiosity-seekers, not for Black Sabbath fans). I thought that Ozzy wouldn't make a believable commentator on medical matters, but he argues convincingly that his vast experience as the victim of a mind-boggling range of accidents and abuse, most (but not all) of them self-inflicted, qualifies him to dispense some level of advice. Nearly every entry has a sort of "I once suffered from the same malady, and I got over it by..." tone to it. Most chapters will contain a short intro, a series of brief questions from readers, with Ozzy providing his answers (which are sometimes shorter than the questions), along with a pull-out box giving interesting factoids on related topics, a handy graph/table running through various maladies. Nearly every answer has a pithy final sentence to it: "if you keep taking drugs, forget about your cholesterol - chances are you'll kill yourself before anything else can", "take it from the Prince of Darkness: cigarettes are evil, man" or "tea might not be very rock 'n' roll, but it's magic potion to me." At the end of each chapter there's a quiz, with the answers and scoring at the end of the book. One chapter, perhaps the most fascinating of them all, has no reader questions at all, but goes over how Ozzy had his genome sequenced and what was learned from it. The chapters are grouped by topics, such as sickness, death, diet and exercise, hygiene, self-medication, human relations, mental health, etc.Naturally, the book is hilarious, although in truth it doesn't really pick up until about page 120, after which there were several points that made me laugh out loud. The back cover, with Ozzy's "medical certificate" from the University of Rock 'n' Roll of Aston, Birmingham (signed by "Dr Malory Practice, IOU") is hilarious, as is the disclaimer (including the fine print in the "Important Safety Information" section - "Trials have shown that a low dose of DR OZZY is no safer than a high dose of DR OZZY"), and even the table of contents itself (Chapter 3 - Pruning: Cleanliness Is Next to Ozzyness; Chapter 4 - Family, The Other F Word: You Love `Em to Death, but They Drive You Mental; Chapter - 10 Sex, Romance & Ballcare: Dr Ozzy's Guide to the Bats and the Bees). In some cases he references an activity, like buying drugs or purchasing a rifle, with a footnote that says "might not be legal where you live" - no duh, sherlock! The book is co-written with Chris Ayres, who co-authored his autobiography, and there is probably also a real medical practitioner around as a consultant. A phrase on one of the early pages says "The Doctor Is In... sane". No more fitting words were ever spoken. But he's not the only one who's bonkers, as we'll see.And so, actually, it's the people who write in from North America and Europe (but also other parts of the world, including China, Dubai, Ghana and Japan) with questions who are the real stars of the book, and there are hundreds of odd cases. Like the 65-year old who asks Dr Ozzy's advice about how to rebuild his flagging libido, after going from a daily bonk with the missus to only two or three a week (get some perspective, Ozzy says - most people don't get it two or three times a week); there's the girl who is debating whether to sleep with her mom's younger boyfriend (Ozzy proves himself a hero and gives advice that only a guy would give); the dummy whose son has told him he's gay, whose reaction is that it's the friends he hangs out with, and an escort might bring out his closet heterosexual; someone whose son self-pleasures all the time ("Ask him if he's been making any model planes recently, because you're finding glue all over the place... with any luck he'll be so embarrassed, he'll never dirty the carpet again."); a guy buys his wife a personal massager as a gift, only to have it become his competitor for her affections (ha ha... serves him right); the guy who's concerned about passing stool after he has his pre-breakfast cigarette (If you're a smoker, why the scoot are you wasting time worrying about your bowels - what about your LUNGS?"), and many more.
