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Ozzy Osbourne recalls trying to kill wife Sharon while on drugs in new documentary

Of all the bad times Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne have survived in their 38-year marriage, including his very public struggles with addiction, the night the Black Sabbath rocker attempted to kill The Talk star has to be one of the scariest.

“[It was] not exactly one of my greatest achievements,” Ozzy said of the 1989 incident on Monday’s premiere of the A&E doc Biography: The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne.

“All I remember is waking up in Amersham [England] jail and I asked the cop, ‘Why am I here?’ And he says, ‘You want me to read your charge?’ So he read, ‘John Michael Osbourne, you have been arrested for attempted murder.’”

Sharon addressed the upsetting situation, too.

“I had no idea who was sat across from me on the sofa but it wasn’t my husband. He goes to a stage where he gets that look in his eyes, the shutters were down and I just couldn’t get through to him,” Sharon said.

“And he just said, ‘We’ve come to a decision that you’ve got to die.’ He was calm — very calm — then suddenly he lunged across at me and just dived on me and started to choke me. He got me down on the ground on top of me.”

Ozzy Osbourne and wife Sharon Osbourne, pictured in 1985, were married in 1982. (Photo: Dave Hogan/Getty Images)
Ozzy Osbourne and wife Sharon Osbourne, pictured in 1985, were married in 1982. (Photo: Dave Hogan/Getty Images)

She had suspected such a moment was coming, because they’d had “a couple of fights.”

As Sharon explained to the Guardian in May 2001, the reality TV stars had a history of being violent with one another even before that.

“Our fights were legendary. We’d beat the s**t out of each other,” she said then. “At a gig, Ozzy would run off stage during a guitar solo to fight with me, then run back on to finish the song!”

Rock star Ozzy Osbourne, 40, in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, where he appeared before Amersham Magistrates Court accused of assaulting his wife Sharon. A previous charge of threatening to kill his wife was withdrawn.   (Photo by PA Images via Getty Images)
Rock star Ozzy Osbourne, 40, in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, where he appeared before Amersham Magistrates Court accused of assaulting his wife Sharon. A previous charge of threatening to kill his wife was withdrawn. (Photo by PA Images via Getty Images)

What saved her on that particular night is that she felt for the table beneath her, which had a panic button.

“I just pressed it and the next thing I know, the cops were there,” Sharon said in the documentary.

Ozzy was sent to medical detention for six months, leaving his wife and the mother of three of his children to do some serious thinking.

Ozzy Osbourne holding a large bottle of whisky at his home, May 1989. (Photo by People/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)
Ozzy Osbourne holding a large bottle of whisky at his home, May 1989. (Photo by People/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)

“I told him, ‘I don’t want the money … but if you do this again, either I am going to kill you or you are going to kill me. And do you want that for the kids?’” Sharon said.

Ozzy has continued to struggle with his addictions to drugs and alcohol over the years. In May 2016, he cited sex addiction as he and Sharon actually split, following the revelation of the latest in a string of affairs. Ozzy later said that he was, in fact, not addicted to sex.

Ozzy and Sharon reconciled within a few months, and they renewed their marriage vows in 2017.