BY JOHN NASH

Here follows a heartwarming story of sincerity and animal love for you:  

On November 18^th, a whole swathe of media outlets, no doubt fed by that deceptive propagandist and shyster Eduardo Gonçalves, including the heavy metal and hard rock website Blabbermouth, reported that Ozzy Osbourne, the unreliable junkie frontman, kicked out of the band Black Sabbath way back in 1979, has personally designed an exclusive t-shirt to support Gonçalves’ little sticky-finger earner, the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting (CBTH).

Apparently, Ozzy and his wife, “X-Factor legend” Sharon, said they are disgusted that vile U.K. trophy hunters are still allowed by law to bring animal parts back to the U.K. from countries including Africa and beyond. “The government said it would ban hunting trophies, so get on with it! Tell your MP you want it banned right now!” stated Ozzy, with a Portuguese hand up his backside, operating his lips.

Sharon added helpfully, “Ozzy and I are big supporters of the campaign to ban trophy hunting.…I can’t think of anything more sickening than killing an animal just for the fun of it. Let’s make trophy hunting extinct, not wildlife. Support the campaign and tell the politicians you want the ban done today not tomorrow”. 

Clearly, too, Sharon’s lips were being manipulated by a Portuguese hand, despite, as the Mail Online reported, “…. In 2022, Sharon revealed she had undergone a facelift the previous year which she felt had a ‘horrendous’ outcome and left her ‘looking like a cyclops’. Speaking to the Sunday Times she said: “I’m telling you, it was horrendous… I’m, like, “You’ve got to be f***** joking. One eye was different to the other. I looked like a f***** Cyclops. I’m, like, “All I need is a hunchback.”  Give Gonçalves his due – it must have taken quite a degree of persistence to operate such frozen lips, but then he gave his game away when her lips said, “Get yourself an Ozzy t-shirt for Christmas and help save the animals!”.  Sadly, Dear Reader, the CBTH has never saved any animals in its whole infernal existence.

Undaunted, Blabbermouth continued with its Portuguese cut ’n paste, “Since launching, the Ban Trophy Hunting organisation has persuaded the British government to ban hunters from bringing home their sick animal trophies back into the U.K and are pushing for the law to be implemented as soon as possible. Britain has been a vocal supporter of moves to curb the illegal trade in endangered wildlife”.  Strangely enough, the CBTH has said the same exact thing on many, many occasions – Ozzy and Sharon are such lovely and sincere celebrities, so typical of Gonçalves’ willing donkeys.

Sincerity runs deep at the CBTH.  One of its founders was the ex-explorer Ranulph Fiennes, now a sad old aristo who spends his time wittering on about how evil hunters are damaging Africa’s wildlife – and he should know – he lived there. Sadly, he forgets to tell you that he, Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, 3rd Baronet OBE, spent his childhood well away from animals in the fabulous family mansion in Cape Town, a member of the local upper class who made their vast fortunes in the vineyards of the Cape.  Those same vineyards were, much earlier, remarkable for the many rhinos that once roamed their slopes before settlers wiped them out and took advantage of the climate and the powerless locals-of-colour to amass fat wine fortunes.  He has climbed Everest three times – maybe the altitude does something to the memory.

And, speaking of memory – proudly displaying the CBTH T-shirt that he obviously designed personally, himself, unaided, without any assistance whatsoever, Ozzy, said: “Trophy hunters are totally crazy. You’ve got to be barking to kill an innocent animal…”.  Could this possibly be the same Ozzy who was widely reported in the media for shooting all the birds and cats in his Los Angeles garden during Covid?  In 2021, he told The Sun that blasting an air rifle outside his LA home was “good fun”. He added: “It gets me out of my head, man. When I am in my house, I worry I never am going to walk properly. When I first started this thing, I could not shoot. Now there’s dead cats (and) birds every minute.”  

No surprise – this is the same Ozzy who reportedly bit the heads off two live doves during an interview in 1981, the head off a bat on stage in 1982 and snorted a row of ants to simulate cocaine on tour.  Very rock ’n roll but not very animal welfare.  Where are the enraged voices of Hyperbole, Tingly and Creosote from Wild Justice when wildlife actually needs them?  

Like the wonderfully mad Osbournes and the not-so wonderful crafty parasite Gonçalves, they are all clowns, supporting each other as they perform in their urban circus ring-piece, an escape from rural reality and the hard work of genuine conservation, not a spotlight upon it.

It was bad enough having to put up with the tinnitus of holy cardboard-eating vegetarians, but now, courtesy of Ozzy’s prodigious lifetime of applied chemistry, we are getting our ears and our laws bent by an actual vegetable.

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John Nash grew up in West Cornwall and was a £10 pom to Johannesburg in the early 1960’s. He started well in construction project management, mainly high-rise buildings but it wasn’t really Africa, so he went bush, prospecting and trading around the murkier bits of the bottom half of the continent. Now retired back in Cornwall among all the other evil old pirates. His interests are still sustainable resources, wildlife management and the utilitarian needs of rural Africa. John is the co-author of Dear Townies with the Editor.