By Katie Smith BBC News Online

You would not have thought there was a huge amount more to be said about the bat-biting, chicken-shooting Prince of Darkness, now reincarnated as MTV's answer to Homer Simpson.

But there is, and author Sue Crawford, who has written an "unauthorised" biography of Ozzy Osbourne says it.

Her book covers all the usual too-often repeated anecdotes - most of which involve some innocent animal and the father of heavy metal's mouth.

But it also offers some new bits of information on the man whose family have become cult viewing on MTV.

He plays family man on MTV

According to her book, Osbourne once tried to strangle his brother, poured petrol over one of his sisters and attempted to hang himself with a piece of clothes line - and that was all before he was old enough to even get into a boozer.

It is the stuff of psychologists' dreams, or nightmares.

The singer's longest regular job - in a slaughterhouse as a teenager - elicits the quote: "I loved killing animals. It was definitely my forte.

"I would stick them, stab them, chop them, totally torture the f***ers to death."

But somehow it is all rather flat. Crawford keeps the life-story rattling along at a healthy pace but fares less well at conveying the emotion and motivation behind Osbourne's worst excesses.

Any brief attempts to do so just look sloppy and are too few and far between to be effective.

What we are left with is merely a narrative. On this level alone, however, the book really does work.

The book is written by a fan for fans

It is brimming with drugs, sex and rock'n'roll. But what else would you expect with Ozzy Osbourne as the subject?

This is certainly a page-turner, a fast-paced, simple but entertaining read. But it is the lean cut, rather than the juice-dripping steak of a book it could and should have been.

What Crawford does succeed in doing is presenting Osbourne as an anomaly, a man of wildly veering contrasts.

One minute he is the dove-chomping, offal-loving madman, and the next he is the pet-owning family man with a penchant for gardening.

But it is the boy from the back streets of Brum, the family man, that finally peeks through as the real Osbourne.

It is clear this is a book written by a fan, for fans. It charts his extraordinary life with utter respect and a huge dose of affection.

Crawford doesn't pull off a rounded picture of John Michael Osbourne but she does offer us a book that is entertaining in the extreme. A bit like the man himself.

Ozzy Unauthorized by Sue Crawford was published on June 26 by Michael O'Mara Books.