Jack Osbourne shows he's no longer a celebrity brat

Jack Osbourne tackles the Kaituna River near Rotorua. Picture / Alan Gibson

It's a long way from the Osbourne mansion in LA to a Herald work car.

But apart from a brief joke about people probably thinking we were up to something seedy, Jack Osbourne embraced the impromptu interview setting without a trace of the spoiled-brat, rock star-son persona that made him infamous.

Fortuitously, the work car had been vacuumed by a kind mechanic the previous day, ridding it of the debris that usually litters the floor.

Persistent Rotorua rain left us no choice but to conduct our interview in its cramped confines - he in a wetsuit and towel, a half-eaten bread roll with brie and ham in his hand.

Osbourne, son of Ozzy and star of the family's reality TV series The Osbournes, agreed to the interview during a break in filming the second series of his documentary adventure show, Adrenaline Junkie, this week.

He had spent the morning kayaking rapids on the rough Kaituna River and was in better shape than his two professional sporting companions, one of whom had injured his shoulder.

Since April, Osbourne has done a Saharan marathon, a South African extreme bungy, and time in the Belizean jungle for the show.

In the first series, he scaled El Capitan, a 2300m vertical rockface in California, after six months intensive training, including learning kickboxing in Thailand.

The first series also saw Osbourne shed more than 20kg and his brat-kid image.

Now 20, he still wisecracks, but is softly spoken, witty and mature - a long way from the tantrum thrower who struggled with drug addiction in his teenage years.

Osbourne credited the positive influence of people like Mike Weeks and Bean Sopwith, the two professional British rock climbers who feature in the series with him, for the change.

"I'm a firm believer in 'You are who you hang out with'," Osbourne said. "If you hang out with low-life people that just sit around smoking pot all day and not doing [anything], you end up becoming that.

"If you hang out with people like Mike and Bean, it's all uphill."

At the same time, he said, it was no surprise that he was a different person from the 15-year-old Jack on The Osbournes. "Everyone grows up and changes, you know."

Then joking about his sister: "I don't know about Kelly though."

So what does his family think of his transformation into extreme sports junkie? "They always think I'm going to die," he laughed.

Sharon cries when he leaves, he said, and Ozzy lectures him when he returns.

The visit to New Zealand is Osbourne's first and has been sponsored by Tourism NZ, Air New Zealand and regional tourism organisations. He planned to do more river kayaking, jetboating and a bungee jump.

Asked what had stuck out in the first few days, he said: "Everybody's so nice.

"People are genuinely nice and it's refreshing to come to a place where no one's an absolute a ... to you all the time."

He had also found himself being recognised more than expected.

"Even back home in Los Angeles, you cut your hair, lose a bit of weight and you can walk around and no one really recognises you ... But over here my cunning disguise isn't working that well."

His cunning disguise? "No glasses, cut hair, eyes down."

Osbourne said he had no problem with people asking him to sign autographs. "It's a problem when they stop asking," he laughed. "That's when they start pointing at you, [saying] 'you bastard'."

For now, he wants to continue with extreme sports TV, and said his former self would not return any time soon.

"I'll wait until I have some midlife crisis, my wife starts cheating on me with the gardener.

"Then I'll probably go back to my bad old ways." And no, he added, there were no potential wives lined up.

By then, the windows of the work car were foggy and it seemed unfair to keep him in the uncomfortable conditions any longer.

"Very nice to meet you," he said as he got out. "I'm sorry I got your car wet."