Ozzy Osbourne has shared a photo of himself jokingly choking his ‘personal dwarf’ John Edward Allen on Instagram. He wrote, “Speak of the Devil.” Ozzy Osbourne’s bandmate recently revealed why he took a brutal shot at Limp Bizkit.
Allen was just 3 foot 10 inches tall, and he was a tailor in Southampton. He then moved to America with dreams to become an actor, landing some jobs on Broadway, followed by roles in Blade Runner, Paradise Alley, and even performing for President Jimmy Carter at the White House. Allen drank a lot, so it was a match made in hell when Ozzy Osbourne hired him for his Speak of the Devil and Diary of a Madman tours. Ozzy renamed him ‘Ronnie,’ the same name as his Black Sabbath replacement Ronnie James Dio.
Ozzy once said, “He showed up late, he drank… It got to me after a while. So, one night, when he wanted to get on the tour bus, I threw him in the luggage compartment. Somebody grabbed me and said: ‘What you’re doing is not only illegal but it’s inhumane.’ I lost it. I yelled: ‘He’s my fucking [dwarf] and I’ll fucking do what I want with him.’”
Far Out Magazine wrote, “During song intervals of live performances on the tour, Ozzy had his roadie dwarf Allen come out and serve him drinks and hand him a towel. Many fans recall that Ozzy would make wisecracks with the crowd, saying things like “say hi to ‘Ronnie’, he lives in a little hole”. Somewhat unbelievably, Ozzy would then bring ‘Ronnie’ back out later in the show to be hung during the song ‘Goodbye to Romance’, a track which was written about Ozzy leaving Sabbath.
The tours lasted in excess of eight months and would see ‘Ronnie’ being hung for every show. Given the tense atmosphere of life on the road coupled with the fact that both ‘Ronnie’ and Ozzy had a tendency to overindulge on the stimulants, the relationship would often boil over. At one point, Ozzy was criticised for the treatment of ‘Ronnie’ after locking him in the luggage compartment of the tour bus while being interviewed by a journalist.”
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