I was never much of an Ozzy fan because I found his voice mopey and morose, though I'll admit that "Crazy Train" and "Paranoid" are great songs. I was inadvertently introduced to his music as a teenager in the 80s when I ran into a guy I knew who was dying for a pack of cigarettes but didn't have enough money, so he sold me a Black Sabbath "greatest hits" tape for $2
It only just occurred to me that the reason Ozzy sounded so morose was because he was a Brummie. Birmingham's accent is routinely called the worst one in Britain because it strikes outsiders as whiny:
I used to watch that show when I was a kid growing up in the UK. Auf Widersehen, Pet was awesome, and is most definitely considered "offensive" by the usual suspects, the humor often being crude.
@Octobyte: When did you come over from the UK, and how old were you at the time? What part are you from? I came here with my family in the 80s, so 40+ years ago -- Scottish dad, Northern Irish mother
@Octobyte: Whereabouts in Norn Iron are you from? (This is where the conversation gets fraught, because if you're from Belfast then I have to find out what religion you belong to and potentially burn you in effigy if it's the wrong one)
@Hirudinea: A couple of years ago I had a funny encounter all the way out here in deepest darkest Nova Scotia: there were a bunch of middle-aged women giggling and carrying on in a restaurant and I thought that one of them had an accent that sounded familiar, so I asked her "excuse me, where are you from?" "Ireland." "What part of Ireland?" "Belfast." "What side of Belfast, west or east?" "East." "What street?" She named a street that I knew well, because it was only about 100 yards from my grandparents' house. Anyway, as soon as she named the street I knew that she was of the other religion, because East Belfast has always been (and mostly still is) strictly segregated, and it only took her a few seconds to look at me and guess that I had lived on the other side. She was still amicable, but an instant chill fell upon our conversation
@Hirudinea: I visited my grandparents' old neighbourhood in Belfast a few months ago along with my sister, and although the religious killings ceased about 30 years ago we still both felt that primal fear when standing at the intersection of our street and theirs -- at a subconscious level we were still worried that someone might drive by and shoot us. The crazy thing is that we spent most of our childhoods elsewhere: I can't even begin to imagine how traumatized the actual locals must be