Trust Me, I’m Dr. Ozzy

missing any genes that you’re in big trouble—but only people with certain types will ever come down with the disease. Another thing that blew me away is how much they already know about the genes involved in things like Huntington’s: they know so much, in fact, even if you don’t have the disease, your DNA can tell you straight up whether or not you’re likely to pass it on to your kids. That’s pretty heavy-duty stuff, and I can see why a lot of people might not want to know. Personally, I’m not that bothered. I’ve already had all my kids, so it’s too late to worry now. And even if my DNA told me that I was a goner, I could still get run over by a truck tomorrow—or poisoned by a radioactive duck turd—long before whatever it was they found in my genome had a chance to kill me. And we all have to die of something. At least if you know what’s coming, you might get a chance to put it off for a while.

The one thing Dr. Nathan told me to remember about all this genome stuff is that it’s still only in its very early days. Until everyone on the planet has had the test done—and the results are fed into some megacomputer, along with everyone’s medical files—it’ll be more for scientists and rich nerds than anything else. As the doc put it: “Looking at someone’s genome today is a bit like trying watch colour TV on a black-and-white set.”

Even on a black-and-white set, though, you can still see a picture—and Dr. Nathan had some pretty far-out things to tell me. The first big piece of news is that I have a famous cousin I never knew about: Stephen Colbert, the American funny guy. “You both have mitochondrial DNA passed down from your mothers in ‘Haplogroup-T,’” he said.

“Haplo… what?”

“Put it this way: Less than 3 per cent of people from European descent are in this group,” he said. “Colbert hasn’t had his full genome sequenced but he did have that part of his DNA tested—for a second time, actually—just a few months ago, which is how we know. In the grand scheme of things, you’re close cousins. Your mothers’ lines go back to a pair of sisters a few thousand years ago. Our best guess is that they were living in the area of the Black Sea at the time. Most randomly chosen people would have to go back about 90,000 years to find a common ancestor.”

There’s only one problem with this life-changing revelation, as far as I’m concerned: if the doc hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t know who the fuck Stephen Colbert is—I’ve never watched his TV show. From now on, though, I’m going to be his most loyal viewer. I mean, I’m always watching the stuff my wife does on telly, so I should do the same for other family members, I suppose. Having said that: why couldn’t they have found out that I’m related to Paul McCartney or John Lennon? Not that I’m short of famous cousins now—thanks to this test, I’m coming down with them. “Your DNA also tested positive for an even smaller part of Haplogroup-T, called Haplogroup-T2,” said Dr. Nathan.

Apparently this makes me a distant relation of Henry “Skip” Gates, a big deal Harvard professor and a mate of President Obama’s. (This isn’t as crazy as it sounds, ’cos the guy was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct not too long ago. That’s pretty good evidence of an Osbourne gene, I reckon.) Other members of my extended family include the original Jesse James, the last Russian Tsar (Nicholas II), and even George I of Britain. I’m sure the royals will be over the fucking moon with that piece of information.

A lot of the other stuff in my genome was more reassuring than mind-blowing. For example: I don’t have any dodgy genes that are strongly linked to cancer, Huntington’s, or Parkinson’s (which I thought I had for a long time, before my doctor realised that I suffer from a “Parkinsonian-like tremor”). So maybe I’ll get to live as long as my indestructible nan, who made it to the age of 99. They also found nothing in my genes that suggests I’m very likely to get Alzheimer’s, which is a relief, given what Sharon’s dad went through with that horrendous disease. Another thing Dr. Nathan discovered is that I’m part Neanderthal. That won’t come as much of a surprise to the missus—or various police departments around the world. But Dr. Nathan thought it was pretty interesting. “It was only a few months ago that scientists managed to sequence a Neanderthal genome from old bones found in a Croatian cave and found a link with humans,” he said. “Previously, it was thought that all modern humans came from Africa about 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. Now we know there was some Neanderthal-human interbreeding, which is why there’s a small part of Neanderthal in your DNA.”

All this is news for blokes everywhere, I think: if the Neanderthals could get lucky with human females, there’s hope for us all. (One thing which blew my mind is that I have less Neanderthal in me than quite a few very brainy people. The professor guy who founded Knome, George Church, has three times more caveman in him than I do.)

Speaking of dead relatives, it also turns out that I share some DNA with the people killed in Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius blew its top in AD 79 (scientists took samples from the bodies in the ash, which is how they can tell). That means I’m also probably also descended from some of the survivors. Which makes a lot of sense, I suppose. If any of the Roman Osbournes drank anywhere near as much booze as I used to, they wouldn’t have even felt the burning lava. They could have just walked it off.

DR. OZZY’S INSANE BUT TRUE STORIES—

How the “Osbourne Identity” Was Unlocked

¦ In July 2010, a “phlebotomist”—whatever the fuck that is—took a sample of my blood and sent it to a lab in New Jersey.

¦ DNA was taken from my white blood cells, dissolved in a salt solution, and then sent off to Cofactor Genomics in St. Louis, Missouri.

¦ At Cofactor, my DNA was “chopped up” into 10 to 25 trillion pieces thanks to some heavy-duty shaking. After that, they spelled out all the chemical letters—in precise order—that make me the certifiable nutter I am.

¦ For the next 16 days, Cofactor used a photocopier-sized machine—which costs more than three Ferraris, so I’m told—to “read” my genome 13 times over and put it on a hard drive.

¦ The hard drive with “me” on it was sent to Knome, Inc., in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

¦ Knome compared the 6 billion letters in my genome with every other genome on the planet—to find why the fuck I’m still alive. Then they put all the findings on a little USB stick thing and presented it to me at home.

¦ While trying to understand what had just happened… my brain exploded.

Apart from the distant ancestor stuff—which seems more fun than useful, to be honest—Dr. Nathan told me things based on my DNA that only my wife or my personal assistant could ever have known. Trying to get him to say it in English was another matter. “There are some variants in your ‘RNASE3’ gene that suggest you’re 240 times more likely than other people to have allergies, according to research,” he told me, for example.

Now, although those kind of odds are supposed to be quite unreliable—Dr. Nathan said they shouldn’t be trusted—they happen to be spot on in my case: I’m allergic to dust mites, and I get bad sinus infections. So who knows? Maybe the Osbourne snot gene might end up helping to find a cure for hay fever. I could think of worse ways to be remembered.

But that was just the beginning of what they found in the nose department when they were poking around in my DNA. “You also have some nonsense variants in nine of your odor receptor genes,” said Dr. Nathan.

“Eh?”

“Basically it means you might not be able to smell a few things—which isn’t all that unusual, because modern humans don’t have to sniff-out their dinner from two miles away, then go and club it to death. As the species has evolved, our sense of smell has become less sensitive.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing: my old man used to claim that he didn’t have any sense of smell—or very little. We always thought he was taking the mickey. Me and my brother used to take it in turns to fart silently next to him, to try and catch him out. But he never fell for it—so maybe he was telling the truth, after all. Maybe it was all in his genes.

Another thing they found is that my body ain’t any good at metabolising coffee. (“You’re a slow acetylator of caffeine,” is how Dr. Nathan put it—according to Tony’s scribbled notes—“because of the way your NAT2 gene works.”) That explains a lot: I like the occasional blast of espresso, but all it takes is one shot, and my eyeballs feel like they’re gonna explode and I start shaking enough to register on the