The Osbourne family, including Ozzy, Sharon, and their kids Jack and Kelly, have recently aired the sixth episode of their rebooted podcast. One of the stories discussed in this episode revolves around Ozzy Osbourne’s alleged ant-snorting incident, as depicted in the MÖTLEY CRÜE biopic The Dirt.
The biopic, which made its debut on Netflix in 2019, portrays a young Ozzy Osbourne, played by Tony Cavalero, engaging in a rather distasteful competition with MÖTLEY CRÜE‘s bassist Nikki Sixx at a hotel pool in Lakeland, Florida, during their shared U.S. tour in 1984. After making an exhibition of himself to hotel visitors, Ozzy requests c*caine from CRÜE. Sixx, played by Douglas Booth, provides a straw, leading to Ozzy inhaling a line of ants crawling on the ground. He then urinates on the ground and licks it, daring Sixx to follow suit. Under pressure, Sixx also urinates on the ground, but before he can proceed further, Ozzy beats him to it by lapping it up first.
In response to Jack‘s question about the validity of the story involving Ozzy inhaling a line of ants, Sharon said: “I was not there, thank God. I used to try and stay away from MÖTLEY when they were with Ozzy. And I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. All I know is that I think it made their movie. And I wanna know why, now we’re on the subject, of why, when they advertise their movie on Netflix, it’s a picture of a guy imitating Ozzy. Why isn’t the ad campaign a picture of MÖTLEY CRÜE? Why is it a picture of your father?”
Jack then added: “Well, I know, I know the answer to that. ‘Cause Ozzy Osbourne‘s bigger than MÖTLEY CRÜE“, to which Ozzy responded: “No. No. No. Stop. Stop. Stop. Let’s move on.” Sharon continued: ” The thing is I just think it’s an invasion.” She then went on to call Sixx an “a**hole.” After Ozzy said, “No, he’s not,” Sharon countered with, “Yes, he f**king is.”
When Jack asked about the truthfulness of Ozzy‘s ant-snorting incident, Sharon responded: “I say no.” But Ozzy claimed otherwise. “Yes. Yes, I did,” he said. “I was there. I did it. [In] my nostril… I was drunk and I did it.”
In 2019, Jake E. Lee, the guitarist who accompanied Ozzy Osbourne on his 1984 tour, publicly contested the story about Ozzy‘s alleged ant-snorting incident during an interview with Tone-Talk.
He said at the time: “I was there, and I never saw ants. I was right there. He snorted a little spider. There was a not a trail of f**king ants there. Tommy [Lee] says it, Nikki says it, Ozzy says it — they were f**ked up. I was not. I was just trying to get a f**king sun tan. That’s all I was doing. They were getting f**ked up. Ozzy snorted a little tiny stupid spider that was crawling across. There was no ants — there was no f**king ants. I don’t care what the other guys say — there was no ants.”
