Ozzy Osbourne on 9/11 attacks: 'I wasn't scared, I was excited!'

The musician described the September 11 disaster as his “kind of crazy”

Ozzy Osbourne has said he would love to be knighted (Getty Images)

Ozzy Osbourne has made the admission that he was "excited" after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The Black Sabbath musician was in New York when the fatal incident took place, killing nearly 3,000 people.

"I wasn’t scared, I was excited! It was my kind of craziness, y’know," he said.

"The day after that happened, there was f*cking nobody in New York. I remember standing on the steps of the hotel, and – you know when you see an old cowboy film and that tumbleweed rolls past on the ground? There was newspapers just floating around on the streets. It was so f*cking weird," he continued.

"Everybody just backed off Manhattan because they didn’t know if it was an all-out thing or what."

Eddy Lawrence, who conducted the interview, has since issued a statement, asserting that the musician was not "excited in a happy way".

"As I understood it in the context of the interview, Ozzy was talking about his nervous anticipation of the days that followed 9/11 and the chaos that was unfolding, not about the attacks themselves, and certainly not that he was excited in a happy way," wrote Lawrence.

"Earlier in the conversation, we'd discussed Black Sabbath's anti-war lyrics and I think Ozzy's comments about Isis show that he thought the events of 9/11 were horrendous."

Osbourne was keen to stress that his comments have been taken out of context by several news services.

"I apologise to anyone who may see these quotes and believe this is actually how I feel," he said in a statement.

"Please know that I would never want to offend or hurt anyone - that was never or would ever be my intention. You would think that at my age I would finally realise that any conversation with a journalist can be twisted, reprinted and made into another story. It's another life lesson learned."

Osbourne considers Isis a threat and believes that the Jihadist militant group (also known as Islamic State) may use nuclear arms before long.

"I hope this Isis lot don’t get going," he told Shortlist. "I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s in mankind to try to kill each other for one thing or another. And I think sooner or later one of these crazy f*ckers is going to get a nuclear weapon or some f*cking thing, and f*ck a lot of people up.

"That’s in our nature. I hope it won’t happen, but it looks like it could happen if they get it."

He revealed that he was not a fan of Bill Clinton or George Bush ("They’re very strange people"), although sympathises with Bush for having to deal with the 9/11 attacks so early on in his presidential career.

"I don’t suppose he expected World War 3 to begin when he got voted in, did he?" said Osborne. "It was a bit of a shocker, a kick in the pants. He hadn’t been in office more than five minutes and 9/11 went down."