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OZZY SAYS HE ‘DIED’ TWICE AFTER BIKE CRASH:

January 3, 2004

LONDON (Reuters) – Heavy metal rocker Ozzy Osbourne said on Sunday he “died” twice after an accident on a quad bike that left him in a coma for eight days.

Osbourne’s life was saved by bodyguard Sam Ruston who went to his aid after the December 8 crash at the star’s country estate in Buckinghamshire, southern England.

“If it wasn’t for Sam I probably wouldn’t be here,” Osbourne told Britain’s Sunday Mirror newspaper.

“He had to bring me back to life twice.”

The former frontman of heavy metal band Black Sabbath said he had learned a lesson from his brush with death.

“I’ll never go near one of those damn bikes again…I am lucky to be here today and not paralyzed,” he told the newspaper.

Osbourne fractured eight ribs and a vertebra in the accident.

“The doctors tell me every day it could have been a lot worse. I could be dead.”

The 55-year old rocker first shot to fame in the 1970s with Black Sabbath and remained in the public eye after he launched a solo career. At a concert in Des Moines, Iowa he bit the head off a bat. He has since said he thought the bat was a toy.

One of the world’s biggest heavy metal stars, selling more than 60 million albums in three-decades, his career is noted for its alcohol- and drug-fueled excess as well as its musical success. Earlier this year he revealed he had been sexually abused as a child when he lived in Birmingham, central England.

In recent years the rocker’s popularity has reached new heights with the success of the hit reality TV series, “The Osbournes,” in which he stars with wife Sharon and two of his three children.

Sharon told the newspaper she would have committed suicide had her husband died.

“If Ozzy had gone, I would have gone with him.” she said.

Courtesy of Reuters