Rock icon Ozzy Osbourne jokingly praised the devil for keeping him safe throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
“My wife had the virus; my daughter had the virus and I never got it,” he told Metal Hammer. “Being a devil worshipper does have its good points!”
Despite his reputation as rock’s Prince of Darkness, Osbourne isn’t a satanist.
“I’m a Christian,” he told The Guardian in 2014. “I was christened as a Christian. I used to go to Sunday school. I never took much interest in it because … I didn’t. My idea of heaven is feeling good. A place where people are alright to each other. This world scares the shit out of me.”
Osbourne, 72, has suffered a series of health problems in recent years, including a staph infection, a case of the flu that turned into pneumonia, Parkinson’s disease and injuries from a 2019 fall from a bicycle that left him “in agony beyond anything I ever experienced before in my life,” he told Rolling Stone at the time.
He announced a farewell tour in 2017 that spanned roughly three years, but postponed portions of it multiple times ― prior to the pandemic shutdowns ― including after he revealed his Parkinson’s diagnosis.
That tour is set to resume in Europe in January.