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Headline: Ozzy Osbourne was sexually abused as child

LONDON - British heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne said in a newspaper interview on Monday that he was sexually abused as a child.


The former Black Sabbath frontman, who won a new generation of fans with a fly-on-the-wall TV series set in his Beverly Hills home, said the abuse took place when he was a schoolboy in central England.


"I was sexually abused as a kid," Osbourne, 54, said in an interview splashed across three pages of the Daily Mirror. "Two boys used to wait for me to come home after school.


"They felt me and touched me. It became a regular thing on the way home from school -- it seemed to go on forever."


He said he was too scared to tell his parents and that he needed counseling later in life to come to terms with it.


"When I was a kid, people did not talk about these things like they do know," he said. "I worked it out with a therapist."


Osbourne became of the world's biggest heavy metal stars, selling more than 60 million albums in a three-decade career noted for its alcohol- and drug-fueled excess.


He said he cut down his drinking after an ultimatum from his wife, Sharon, who was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2002.


"She left me for four days," he said. "I think I have had one glass of wine since."


The alcohol exacerbated a hereditary condition which gives him a pronounced tremor, which he controls with medication.


"Now I am only taking two pills three times a day and I feel a hell of a lot better for it," he said.


After performing for Britain's Queen Elizabeth and winning a third series of his reality TV show, Osbourne said he was surprised by his long-running success.


"I have a had an incredible life," he told the Mirror. "I am 55 on December 3 -- how I survived is a miracle."