The Magic

I once met Ozzy Osbourne in a first-class lounge in LAX, or should that be, I was once standing at the same buffet table as Ozzy. What struck me about the man was how fucked he seemed, and this was more than 13 years ago. If he'd died on the flight, I would have said "he didn't look well".

The fact that he kept going and continued to perform reminded me of a story a stagehand at the City Varieties Music Hall once told me about Ken Dodd, another of Britain's famous sons and master performers. The stagehand told me that when Ken Dodd turned up for a gig, he was so old and decrepit that you didn't even think he could get out of the car, let alone get to his dressing room. Dodd would shuffle in and sit in his dressing room until his curtain call, then slowly shuffle to the edge of the stage.

But the moment he stepped onto the stage, into the lights, something he had been doing day in and day out since the 1950s, some magical transformation occurred. His body would straighten, his eyes open wide, a toothy grin across his face, and he would be the Ken Dodd everyone had come to see.

And when he left the stage, and the lights dimmed, he would return to the shadow.

Ken toured all his life, and died at the age of 90, only a few weeks after his last gig.

Ozzy didn't make it that far, but seeing as he even made it past his twenties and all the way to 76 is some kind of miracle in itself, but both were blessed by a kind of magic, to entertain, that can bring even the dead back to life.