Clearly I'm not a Black Sabbath groupie. I cringe at the very sound of heavy metal. So there was actually only one thing I even knew about Ozzy. It’s too disgusting to repeat.

Oh, okay, I'll tell, but remember, you asked for it.

Ozzy's "people" had one ironclad stipulation for the interview: there would be no questions about bats. If you know what that means, you're smiling -- or gagging. If you're confused, here's the true story.

In the 1980's Ozzy and Black Sabbath were hard core alcohol and drug abusers. There were rumors of Satanism. And worse. During a now notorious concert, a fan threw a live bat onto the stage. Ozzy grabbed it and bit its head off.

Oh yes he did.

Here's the thing. Although he’s admittedly bonkers, Ozzy thought the bat was fake, a realistic looking Goth toy. He immediately started vomiting and staggered offstage. Fans went crazy, thinking it was part of the show.

It was gruesome reality. Handlers had to cancel the concert and get Ozzy to the nearest hospital for treatment and a long series of painful rabies vaccinations.

Even knowing the truth about the bat legend, I was pretty skeeved out to be meeting the bizarre zonked out hard rocker in person. Especially since it was my job to help him connect, coherently, with his fans on AOL. A challenge, to say the least.

But I love a challenge. Mostly.

Meeting Ozzy, Et Al

Sharon Osbourne (yep, before her ‘transformation’), me in the middle and MTV’s first VJ, Downtown Julie Brown

We gathered in a deluxe Waldorf penthouse. The chat would announce the new Ozzfest tour and promote Ozzy's signing his new CD, The Ozzman Cometh, at a midtown Tower Records.

I was surprised when a pleasant, squeaky clean man in a navy velour Adidas track suit, complete with fanny pack, wandered into the room and diffidently asked is this AOL and does anyone have a Pepsi and an ashtray.

We'd prepared a large round table with two laptops. We quickly added bottles of Pepsi and several ashtrays for Ozzy's omnipresent Marlboro Lights. I explained I'd type the intro, Julie would ask the questions and a guy from AOL's New York office would type Ozzy's answers.

While we chatted before the interview I was struck by three things. Ozzy's glossy, glorious mane of hair. His name tattooed on his multi-ringed fingers. And his quiet, quirky but undeniable charm. Yes, really.

The Ozzy AOL Interview

Somebody (not me!) forgot to find out if Downtown Julie could type. She couldn't. And without scripted cue cards, she couldn't conduct an interview either. So I jumped in to do both while she sat by Ozzy, poured his Pepsi and chain-lit his cigarettes.

As the online interview progressed it became clear Ozzy's not all there. It was absolute hell to pull coherent answers from him. (Sharon provided more than a few along the way). But the little brain power and personality that remains is that of a talented man with charisma to spare.

If you've seen him as the befuddled father in his MTV reality series and paid some attention to the words between the expletive-deleted bleeps, you know what I mean.

He is incredibly profane. I had to think fast to quickly type around every variation of every curse word in the English language. But he's also smart. And witty.

He's totally devoted to --and dependent upon-- Sharon. And he holds no illusions about his checkered past, its effect on his children, and on other people's children too.

Ozzy’s Great Punch Line

He spoke candidly about his former drug and alcohol abuse and urged his fans not to make the same mistakes. In fact, his best line came in answer to a question about the extent of his drug use.

"Let’s put it this way, Luv. If they ever dropped a nuclear bomb on New York," Ozzy said. "The only things left alive would be cockroaches, Keith Richards and me."

Not a pretty picture. But a great image. The image of Ozzy Osbourne I took away that night was of a clean and sober husband, father, musician, performer ... and actually a pretty nice guy.

Charlie Sheen is the latest favorite fool, but no matter how well he can act on TV, he can't seem to stay clean and sober --or shut the hell up-- long enough to discover what he wants, who he is and how to forge a stable, rewarding personal life.

Goddesses. Oh please. Tiger blood. Gag me. Poetry in his fingertips. Give me a break. Winning every second. Bring in the clowns. Cue the music. Launch the new ship of fools.

I've never met Charlie, but he and Ozzy have been down the same path of recurring addictions, bizarre departures from reality and rampant bouts of self-destruction.

Something tells me Charlie Sheen, no matter how rich, unless he gets help and finds a solid, loving partner like Sharon, is doomed to out-Ozzy Ozzy as the biggest fool of all.

And guess what? Thanks to Sharon, who is nobody's fool, Ozzy too can laugh all the way to the bank.