By Michael Moran

Copyright birminghammail

Heavy metal icon Ozzy Osbourne made a bleak prediction about the afterlife just weeks before he died. Ozzy passed away on July 22 after a battle with Parkinson’s disease, just three weeks after his triumphant Back to the Beginning concert with Black Sabbath in their native Birmingham . In his posthumous memoir Last Rites, to be published on Tuesday (October 7), he spoke frankly about what he thought would await him after the end of his life. The Black Sabbath legend admitted “I’ve no idea” what would happen before he died at the age of 76 earlier this year. He wrote: “People ask me what I think’s gonna happen in the afterlife. I say to ’em, ‘I’ve no idea, but it won’t be long now, so if you hand around a bit, maybe I can haunt you and give you the answer.’ “As for what I want on my tombstone, that’s one of the subjects my family definitely won’t let me discuss.” Ozzy’s highly-anticipated posthumous book was completed in the aftermath of his successful return to Birmingham for the Villa Park gig, which saw Sabbath perform one final gig along with the biggest names in metal, including Metallica, Guns N’ Roses and Slayer. Dad-of-six Ozzy has previously spoken about what he knew would be written on his grave. He was aware there was no escaping a notorious incident from 1982, when he was touring his Diary of a Madman album. During a show in Des Moines in the US state of Iowa, a fan threw what Ozzy initially believed was a rubber toy bat onto the stage. It wasn’t until he put the “toy” in his mouth and ripped its head off with his teeth that he realised that it was – or had been – alive. In a 2004 interview Ozzy wryly commented: “I know what’s going to be on my tombstone, and there’s no getting around it: ‘Here lies Ozzy Osbourne, the ex-Black Sabbath singer who bit the head off a bat’.” In his 2010 autobiography I Am Ozzy, he recalled the instant he realised his mistake: “Something felt wrong. Very wrong. For a start my mouth was instantly full of this warm, gloopy liquid. Then the head in my mouth twitched.” However Mark Neal, the 17-year-old fan who is believed to have thrown the unfortunate animal onto the stage, insists that it had died quite some time before the concert. Ozzy had always been completely fearless on stage, but he confessed to some nerves before what turned out to be his final show – the all-star Back to the Beginning event in Birmingham on July 5. As more and more famous names were added to the bill, he said he began to feel the pressure. Aware of his extreme ill-health and worried that he might be unable to perform, Ozzy tried to come up with a backup plan: “I kept saying to Sharon , ‘We’d better get a video made ‘cos there’ll be an empty stage.’ She just looked at me like I was mad. She knows me better than I do. She knew I was just scared.” Sharon, who had been he husband’s manager since 1979, reassured him, saying: “If you can’t sing on the night, just talk to the crowd and thank them. All you need to do is get up there and be Ozzy.” Writing in his book Ozzy admitted he doubted he would make it back to England for his farewell gig. He said: “Well, I made it. Back to England. Back to Birmingham. Back to the Beginning as my final gig was called. “For a while I was convinced my last trip home would be in a pine f***ing box. “I mean, I’ve got to be honest with you, when Sharon first mentioned the idea of the gig to me, I didn’t think there was much chance of me making it to 2025.” The star added that the outpouring of love from that capacity crowd at Villa Park was the high he had been chasing all along after a lifetime of substance abuse. “At Back to the Beginning, sitting on that throne, I felt at home, I felt at peace,” the former slaughterhouse worker wrote. “I felt comfortable. I’m gonna miss doing it, going on stage. It’s the only world I’ve known for 57 years. “There’s nothing better than a good gig. The roar of a crowd, man, it’s so contagious, so addictive. That’s the magic, right there.” “It’s funny, I spent my whole life trying to get high from every substance known to man. But looking back now, I realise I was just trying to get back the feeling of when I was up there on stage, doing my job.” Sharon & Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home airs tonight (Thursday, October 2) at 9pm on BBC One.