The bizarre story of booze, Ozzy Osbourne, Oliver Reed and a tattooed penis
Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne has had one hell of a life. Being a member of a celebrated metal group in the 1960s and ’70s had its perks – most of them involving large amounts of cocaine. He also had the chance to mix with other fame-hungry creatives, giving birth to some truly debauched celebrity stories. By far the most memorable is Ozzy’s story about meeting revered English actor and known hellraiser Oliver Reed for the first time.
Ozzy and Oliver met as equals – they were both obliterated. While best known for his appearances in films such as The Trap, Oliver! and Women In Love, Reed also had a reputation for heavy drinking. Despite his respectable exterior, he was addicted to the strong stuff: strong opinions, strong actions, and strong drinks. He was a notorious binge drinker, and countless tales exist concerning his ability to down pints like a madman. It’s believed that on one occasion, Reed and 36 friends drank 60 gallons of beer, 32 bottles of scotch, 17 bottles of gin, four crates of win and a bottle of Babycham in a single evening, though the details of that story were revised by Reed on each re-telling.
No wonder Osbourne was a little disconcerted when he met Reed one night while out drinking. “The door burst open and Oliver Reed walks in and I never realised he was such a big guy – he looked like a big bear walking in. Anyway, he orders a drink and I’m sat at the bar and he looks around and looks at me and goes: ‘oh, I see tattoos.’ And I says, ‘oh, fuck me. He’s legless and he’s gonna start on me.’ And he goes, ‘I have a tattoo’, and I go, ‘oh really?’ And he goes, ‘would you like to see my tattoo?’ Expecting to see an anchor or something on the actor’s arm, Ozzy politely agreed. “So he gets his dick out,” Osbourne continued. “I don’t take much of a look, but he had a tattoo on the end of his dick.”
According to Robert Sellers’ book Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Burton, Harris, O’Toole and Reed, the tattoo was of “two eagle’s claws” and was drawn up one night in December 1981. After zooming around LA to find a tattoo artist willing to work with such a delicate part of the human anatomy, Oliver and his friends arrived at a run-down parlour in one of the city’s more salubrious districts. Again the tattooist refused Reed’s request. “At that moment,” Sellers writes, “the man’s wife appeared. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said. ‘Make bigger, please.’ Ollie had rather a nice time engineering his cock to a suitable size for the woman to work on.”
Two hours later, Reed emerged with his member wrapped in a bloodied bandage. According to Sellers, Reed got the tattoo so that when people asked about the eagle’s head tattoo on his shoulder, he could say: “‘Would you like to see where it’s perched?'” Indeed, on one particularly boozy holiday to the Caribbean, “Ollie got carried away and, as was his usual way, flashed his prick at fellow hotel guests. Alas, the eagle’s claw tattoo on his cock was interpreted as a voodoo image and he was chased out of the bar.”
