Trust Me, I'm Dr Ozzy (35 page)

Eaten by a cannibal.
How the fuck anyone calculated this statistic is beyond me, but the chances of ending up as someone’s lunch allegedly works out at 25 billion to one. In terms of things to worry about, it’s up there with being hit by an asteroid (7.5 billion to one) and being trapped in a freezer (360 million to one).

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

Suddenly, at the age of 43, I’ve found myself beginning to stutter. I’m mortified. Is this just a fact of getting older, or something more serious? Is it going to get worse? Please help, Dr. Ozzy.

Ellen, Birmingham

It might be serious, or it might not be, but you should go and see a neurologist, just in case. I also started to jumble my words up as I got older—although stutters run in my family. It usually happens when I’m excited or frustrated. I used to treat it with a nip of booze every now and again, which helped, until I became a raging alcoholic. By the time people saw me on
The Osbournes
, they couldn’t understand a word I was saying. Then I watched the show myself, and
I
couldn’t understand a word I was saying, either. You’ve just got to slow down. When I stopped speaking so fast, I stopped stuttering as much. I try to think of the end of a sentence now before I start it. And although I never went to a speech therapist for stuttering, I’m told that can help a lot. Why not try it?

Dear Dr. Ozzy,

I’m bald, fat and married, and becoming increasingly depressed by the thought that I’ll never enjoy my wild days of youthful debauchery ever again. As someone who’s given up drinking and philandering, how do you come to terms with getting old?

Mike, New Jersey

Whatever you do, don’t just sit there like a lump, waiting for the Grim Reaper to arrive. Find something you enjoy doing, maybe some kind of exercise—not bonking the next-door neighbour’s wife—and let off your pent-up frustration through that. Look at me: I’m 62 years old, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I don’t run around with groupies any more, but at the moment I’m doing a two-and-a-half-hour rock ’n’ roll show in a different city every night, and—in my head at least—I feel like I’m 21 years old. Don’t give up, man. Seriously. Accept the things you can’t change and get on with your life.

DR. OZZY’S AMAZING MEDICAL MISCELLANY

Most Likely Ways to Die
^*

A mind-blowing 59 million people (roughly) die every year on Planet Earth, with the most popular reason being a dodgy ticker. In fact, heart disease accounts for 12.2 per cent of all deaths throughout the world, rich and poor.

Strokes give heart attacks a good run for their money on the Grim Reaper’s Hit List, coming in at No. 2 and killing 5.7 million people a year—9.7 per cent of all deaths.

Pneumonia and emphysema (lower respiratory infections and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, to use the proper terms) come in at No. 3 and No. 4. Smoking is the leading cause of emphysema, another very fucking good reason to quit.

Never in a billion years would I have guessed the fifth most common cause of death in the world: diarrhoea. Tragically, more than half of all the 2.2 million victims every year are kids under five years old, and they get it from dodgy food and water. Although it’s easily treatable in the West, if you’re in a poor country, a bad case of the runs can kill you from dehydration and fluid loss—especially if you’re already malnourished.

After diarrhoea, the other most likely ways to die are: AIDS (No. 6), Tuberculosis (No. 7), lung cancers (No. 8), road traffic accidents (No. 9), and premature birth/low birth weight (No. 10).

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

As the Prince of Darkness, are you a supporter of “Dr. Death”—a.k.a. the late American euthanasia advocate Jack Kevorkian, who spent almost a decade in prison?

Carlos, United States

To a certain degree I could understand “Dr. Death” when he said doctors should be able to help their patients top themselves. But then again, knowing America the way I do, if it became legal, somebody would end up doing a deal—y’know, “If you pop my nan, I’ll give you 25 per cent of the inheritance” kind of thing. There are certain kinds of doctors of here—
anywhere
, probably—who’d kill you for ten grand, no problem at all. And then you’d have elderly relatives who’d feel pressured into taking the death juice, ’cos they wouldn’t want to be a burden, y’know? So I’d at least want there to be some kind of process, not just squeeze-this-trigger-and-you’re-gone, see ya. Having said that, though, I’ve always told Sharon, “If my quality of life is terrible, if I can’t go for a piss by myself, if I’m paralysed—you have my permission to pull the plug.” I mean, people say, “That’s going against God.” But
being a doctor
is going against God, isn’t it? If you’ve got a headache, it ain’t God who reaches down and gives you the aspirin.

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

At 62, you are so good-looking, man! What is your secret? Have you got some kind of magic shake that gives you eternal youth? Could you share this formula with us?

Klausitta, Tallinn, Estonia

It’s called English breakfast tea, with a good brand of honey. I get through about ten bowls of that stuff a day. I also eat as much fruit as I can. Forget bowls of brown M&Ms: the first thing I ask for when I go to any hotel room on the road is a selection of the local fruit. They also say that alcohol preserves… but I don’t believe that for one fucking second.

DR. OZZY’S INSANE-BUT-TRUE STORIES

The Age of the Supercentenarian

When I was a kid, people counted themselves lucky if they lived long enough to get a gold watch and a retirement bash down the pub. Nowadays, you can be retired for longer than you ever worked. Take Jeanne Calment, the French chick who broke the record for the longest-ever (independently verified) human lifespan. She was born in 1875 in Arles and managed to outlive her entire family, including her grandson (he died in 1963 when he fell off a motorbike). She was so old, she’d even met Vincent van Gogh—although she thought the guy was a c
^***
. (“Dirty, badly dressed, disagreeable… very ugly, ungracious, impolite [and] sick,” was what she told one interviewer.) She was a remarkable woman, Jeanne: she took up fencing at the age of 85; kept riding a bicycle until she was 100; and smoked every day until she was 117. Meanwhile, she never went on a diet, and never stopped eating her two favourite things: olive oil and chocolate. She passed away in 1997, by which time she was an unbelievable 122 years old and 164 days.
Guinness World Records
now has a term for people like Jeanne who live beyond the age of 110: “supercentenarians.” According to the experts, there are between 300 and 450 of ’em living today—and you can pretty much guarantee that number’s gonna rise.