[Boiler]

You wait until Noddy Holder's time comes...

[Killer Whale]

Brum vs Wolverhampton incoming...

[Boiler]

Brum vs Wolverhampton incoming...

Which would be spectacularly missing the point...

[Rosvanian]

The Ozzy grief-fest.

Am I alone in finding it all over-the-top, slightly distasteful, and faintly ridiculous ? It’s the biggest outbreak of performative, vicarious grieving since Princess Diana.

Okay, Osborne was from Birmingham. And he was fairly successful as a popular musician, and kind of well-known because of his TV appearances on “reality” TV - much parodied as a kind of clueless, drug-addled Brummie half-wit by the likes of Jon Culshaw and Rory Bremner. A “celebrity” in contemporary terms.

But that was all. He was not someone whose (not un-anticipated) death I would have anticipated as triggering the mass outpouring of grief that it seemingly has.

Living in Birmingham, I’m acutely aware of today’s public obsequies, centred as they are on the city. It’s on every national and, particularly, local news bulletin.

There have been frankly idiotic online petitions set up, one calling for Osborne to be given a full state funeral (which might have been a piss-take, but I can’t be certain), and one demanding that Birmingham’s airport be re-named Ozzy Osborne Airport (I think that one was deadly serious).

Frankly, it’s a little embarassing. I’ve found myself wondering which, if any, other famous sons or daughters of the city of Birmingham would engender such grief-driven excess by dint of their demise. Jeff Lynne? Bev Bevan? Jasper Carrott ? Can’t think of one.

Complete cringe and utterly baffling. I wonder what Iommi and Butler really think, given they were the creative force behind Black Sabbath's heyday. As for his solo career, the Americans are welcome to it.

[Andy McDandy]

There's a school of thought that the Diana circus essentially created, fuelled, and finally consumed itself.

Her death was announced at a very quiet point in the daily, weekly, and annual news cycles - early hours of a Sunday morning at the end of August. It was in the early days of 24 hour rolling news. Had she died 2 years earlier, or maybe even a few months later, her death would have been announced, and the world would have moved on. Instead, we got round the clock coverage because there was nothing else to report on. And then, the scarcity of information meant that what little was known had to be repeated over and over, and padded out with opinions from anyone available. By that stage, every news outlet was on it, and none dared back out for fear of missing something - any tiny detail that might just let them sneak one past the opposition. Then the one-upmanship starts. Everyone has to grieve a bit louder, reveal a more personal connection, make a more outlandish suggestion for preserving her memory, or demand a harsher punishment for anyone not joining in.

Ten years later, we saw it again with Madeline McCann. Had she disappeared from a damp caravan site outside Workington, the only people remembering her today would be her family.

[Abernathy]

The other day, I thought maybe I should actually listen to some of Black Sabbath's music, to try to see where all this adulation has come from. So I fired up my Tidal account and dialled up the Sab. I listened to about 5 tracks, including "Paranoid", "War Pigs", and something else.

It was fucking awful.

[Killer Whale]

I remember a friend excitedly playing it to me in his bedroom when we were kids. As a 14 year old punk rocker, I recall thinking "A drum solo - on an LP? What is this bollocks?"

[Rosvanian]

The other day, I thought maybe I should actually listen to some of Black Sabbath's music, to try to see where all this adulation has come from. So I fired up my Tidal account and dialled up the Sab. I listened to about 5 tracks, including "Paranoid", "War Pigs", and something else.

It was fucking awful.

Well, either you're a metal head or you're not. I guess you're not. If you are, then you'll know that their DNA is in pretty much in every metal band that ever existed, regardless of whether they were a direct influence. When I first heard Black Sabbath in 1976/77 they were loathed by the NME and Melody Maker which is perhaps why I checked them out.