Born John Michael Osbourne, he dropped out of school aged 15, holding several low-paid jobs and spending a short spell in prison for burglary before embarking on his musical career.

After singing with several local bands, he joined Black Sabbath alongside guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler, and drummer Bill Ward in the late 1960s.

They developed a unique sound, inspired by the blues but slower, louder and more sinister - with frequent references to the occult.

Considered pioneers of heavy metal, they released their self-titled album in 1970 and followed it up with platinum records such as Paranoid and Master of Reality throughout the rest of the decade.

Fired from the band in 1978, he launched a successful solo career with the 1980 album Blizzard of Ozz, featuring the classic single Crazy Train.

The following year’s Diary of a Madman was even more popular, selling more than five million copies.

Along the way, Osbourne developed a reputation for his unhinged live performances, exemplified by the (possibly exaggerated) story that he had once bitten the head off a live bat during a concert, having mistakenly thought it was a toy thrown on stage by a fan.

His intake of drink and drugs was legendary, leading to some peculiar behaviour. The rock band Motley Crue once described how Osbourne, in a competition to see whose habits were the most debauched, snorted a line of ants from a hotel floor.

There was also a dark side to his addiction. In 1989, he woke up in jail, having been arrested for the attempted murder of his second wife, Sharon.

Following the arrest, Osbourne was ordered by the court to spend six months in rehabilitation. Believing he was remorseful, Sharon decided not to press charges.

Speaking in the 2020 documentary The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne, she recalled: “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?'”

In the 1990s, his wild image transformed thanks to the MTV reality show The Osbournes - which portrayed the star as the well-meaning, frequently befuddled patriarch of an unruly household.

This, he said, was his true personality.

“All the stuff onstage, the craziness, it's all just a role that I play, my work," he told The New York Times in 1992. "I am not the Antichrist. I am a family man."

The Osbournes also made stars of his manager-wife Sharon, and children Jack and Kelly - with whom he duetted on a chart topping version of the Sabbath song Changes in 2003.