Ozzy garage sale raises cancer cash - Dec 3 2007
Heavy metal fans are not usually seen making bids at a high-end auctions, but they turned out in numbers to snatch up a coat with embroidered bats, sneakers with skulls on them and other items put up for sale by Ozzy Osbourne.

"We had Ozzy fans bidding against these sophisticated fine art buyers, which you don't see every day," said Darren Julien, whose company, Julien's Auctions, ran the charity sale. "For the most part the metalheads were outbidding the art crowd."

Bidders came from as far as Germany to try to buy belongings from the Beverly Hills mansion formerly owned by the rocker and former star of "The Osbournes" reality show.

Items featured on Osbournes' hit MTV show were the most popular, Julien said. The bat coat sold for £1,650, the skull trainers brought in £1,300, and a pair of the rocker's trademark round glasses went for £2,600.

Mr Julien said the "Ozzy factor" made ordinary items command big-ticket prices. An oversized coffee cup that Osbourne often clutched while the cameras rolled sold for £800. A dog bed given to Osbourne's wife Sharon by Elton John brought in £1,650.

Fine art buyers were interested in items like a sculpture by French artist Edouard Drouot (£5,500) and a painting by Gabriel Joseph Marie Augustin Ferrier (£2,600).

Mr Julien said Osbourne almost did not want to part with his prized pool table because he cherished the memories of playing with his kids as they were growing up. The table eventually ended up on the auction block and it brought in £5,000.

But nobody will be driving to work Monday in the Oz Man's 2006 Bentley, which was estimated to be worth £80,000 to £90,000. It didn't sell.

The auction brought in £400,000 - more than twice the amount Mr Julien predicted. All proceeds from the sale go to The Sharon Osbourne Colon Cancer Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

"For a celebrity garage sale, it was pretty spectacular," Julien said.

Ozzy’s anger over sting - Nov 5 2007
Ozzy Osbourne says a North Dakota police chief should apologise for staging a Donal MacIntyre-style sting operation in the rocker’s name without his permission.

The former Black Sabbath frontman claims his reputation was tarnished when Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney invited 500 people with outstanding warrants to a phoney party at a Fargo nightclub before the rocker’s concert with Rob Zombie at a nearby arena. More than 30 showed up and were arrested.

"Instead of holding a press conference to pat himself on the back, Sheriff Laney should be apologising to me for using my name in connection with these arrests," Osbourne said in a statement.

"It is insulting to me and to my audience and it shows how lazy this particular sheriff is when it comes to doing his job."

But Laney said it was his job to arrest people with outstanding warrants.

"We meant no disrespect towards Mr Osbourne or his show," Laney said. "What we did was a very creative law enforcement technique to lure individuals who had active criminal warrants to come to us."

He said mentioning Osbourne’s name in the invitations was no different than a bar advertising a Super Bowl party by mentioning the teams playing in the game.

Laney said Monday’s sting was done to let the community know his office was doing its best to serve about 3,000 outstanding warrants it must deal with.

"They get very creative in how they abscond from the law," the sheriff said of the wanted individuals. "We just got real creative in how we reeled them in."