A North-East roadie has written a book about life touring with Black Sabbath in the 1970s. Chris Webber talks to him.

FOR all his easy chair, impeccably tidy home and comfortable middle-aged lifestyle there's still something of the wild rocker about Graham Wright.

It could surely be no other way after years on the road with The Prince of Darkness himself, Ozzy Osbourne.

Ozzy, the crazy former lead singer of Black Sabbath, makes more than the odd appearance in Graham's book about life as the band's roadie.

There's stories of Ozzy 'mooning' at passers-by, drinking plenty of booze, getting involved in fights and complaining about ugly groupies.

But Graham's book, called How Black Was Our Sabbath, paints a truer picture of Ozzy and the other three members of the band, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward and Tony Iommi, as only occasional wild men.

"I was on tour with Marylin Manson as his roadie not long ago and he reminded me of Ozzy in some ways," says Graham who lives at Ingleby Barwick, near his home town of Stockton. "They're both actually intelligent blokes who know exactly what their image is worth.

"The thing about Ozzy was how funny he was. We always told him he'd have been a stand-up comedian if he hadn't have been in a band.

Ozzy told me and fellow roadie, David Tangye, who I wrote the book with, to 'go for it' when we told him about the book. I like to see him on the television. He's just the same as he always was."

Not that Graham, who worked with the band from 1974 to 1980, and David haven't got a few funny tales of their own to tell. There's the tales about the big fights and the groupies, but the ones that capture the imagine are the everyday stories of practical jokes and wind-ups. Like the time when Black Sabbath were touring Britain with Van Halen. Half way up the A1 through Northumberland Graham and another roadie kidded Van Halen's guitarist, Barry, he would need a work permit and visa for Scotland. Panic-stricken Barry agreed to be smuggled in the back of a truck, while the Black Sabbath crowd were in tears of laughter. Eventually Barry, who was also smuggled back into England, started boasting about his exploits but Graham arranged for a Newcastle bobby to 'arrest' him at a later gig sending Barry into a wild panic.

"He never forgave us," laughs Graham, a 53-year-old accomplished amateur artist who has also roadied for The Rolling Stones and Tina Turner.

As he speaks you can imagine quiet, father-of-two Graham still heading off with the Sabbath for a few quid and a few laughs.

*How Black Was Our Sabbath is published by Sidgwick and Jackson and is currently for sale in most book shops, priced £16.99.