Sir Elton John calls Ozzy Osbourne weekly to check how he's doing.

Ozzy Osbourne

Ozzy Osbourne

The unlikely duo have formed a friendship during lockdown and Ozzy has revealed the 'I'm Still Standing' singer calls his wife Sharon Osbourne each week to see if he's ok.

He said: "The surgery I had knocked the c*** out of me. But I broke my neck in a quad bike accident [in 2003] and when that healed it squeezed my spinal column, so I was getting all kinds of weird things happening to me. I’d be on stage and I’d suddenly get a sharp shock down one side of my body. Then one night 18 months ago I went to the bathroom in the dark and just hit the ground. I said, 'Sharon, I’m on the floor,' and she said, 'Well, get up then!' But I couldn’t. Once you’re 70, the floodgates open and everything goes downhill."Mind you, I’ve got away with it for a long time ... Every single week Elton John calls my wife. I’m not one to hang out with this one and that one but he’s become a family friend."

And Ozzy is trying his best to shield during the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking to GQ magazine after he was handed the Lifetime Achievement award at the GQ Men Of The Year awards, he added: "I try my hardest. If I go out I wear a mask, but I don’t like wearing a mask, so I don’t go out much. The producer on my album [Andrew Watt] got the virus.

"I’d phone him up every day and he said he couldn’t sleep, because as soon as he went to sleep he’d stop breathing. He’s not the same person now... It’s like anyone who’s had a near-death experience: he’s become a bit careful with life. But my two granddaughters caught it and you wouldn’t think they had anything wrong with them. It just bounced off them."