Sharon Osbourne has reflected on the infamous Ozzfest where she pelted Iron Maiden with eggs.
The London metal stars were co-headlining the 2005 festival with Black Sabbath when organiser Osbourne took issue with comments Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson allegedly made about reality television.
Sharon, husband and Black Sabbath singer Ozzy and their family had just finished starring in MTV series The Osbournes.
Sharon retaliated against the comments by egging Maiden during the final Ozzfest stop in Los Angeles.
The band also endured power outages during their set.
An enraged Dickinson told the audience in attendance: “You might have noticed that a few wise-asses decided they would go down the supermarket and buy a few fucking eggs and start throwing them at us down the front.”
He added: “I guess they thought they’d be funny, but this is an English fucking flag and these colours do not run from US whites!”
In a new interview with Billboard looking back on Ozzfest, Sharon has spoken further about her action 19 years ago.
She accuses Dickinson of being “eaten up with jealousy” for Ozzy.
“It was just the singer,” the businesswoman says.
“The other guys in the band are great, great people. No problem at all.
“But when you’ve got a singer that is so eaten up with jealousy for the headliner, it never goes well.”
Sharon also reveals that she got the nurses administering her then-ongoing chemotherapy treatment to join her in ambushing Maiden.
She had surgery for colon cancer in July 2002.
“I had been having cancer treatments, and all the nurses that I had met over my year in chemo came to the show and they said, ‘Can we do anything for you?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, you can.’
“I loaded them up with cans of bean soup, vegetables, eggs, and I said, ‘Pelt the singer.’ And that’s what they did.”
In a 2017 interview, Dickinson voiced his respect for Black Sabbath, calling the band and Ozzy “icons”.
However, the singer didn’t mention Sharon and refused to retract his prior criticisms of reality TV, saying, “I’m not gonna offer an olive branch to the Kardashians either.”
