Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne to holiday in NZ

Sharon Osbourne says she will bring her husband, rock legend Ozzy Osbourne, to New Zealand for an extra long holiday.

She told the London Sun newspaper that she and the ageing heavy metal star Ozzy planned to take a two-year holiday after her current UK television show X Factor ends, and that New Zealand is their main destination.

"Ozzy's worked 13 years solid without taking a summer off," she said. "So we're going to travel and spend some time in New Zealand.

"We really want to spend time together.

"We're going to spend some time out. We really need it."

She said that after decades of being Ozzy's wife and manager, taking care of her kids Kelly and Jack, being on the family's reality TV show, having her own TV career and recovering from colon cancer, she was now looking forward to retiring one day.

Sharon Osbourne claimed her American chat show came to an end last year because she asked a "little-known New Zealand actor" if he had sex with sheep.

She was host of the Sharon Osbourne Show -- which shows in NZ on Sky TV -- for just one season, and since it was canned admitted it was her crude line of questioning of former Shortland Street actor Martin Henderson which prompted bosses to show her the door.

He appeared on her show in January 2004 to promote a movie, Torque, and Osbourne said later: "They said I was a loose cannon.

"The last straw was there was this actor from New Zealand... it's pretty boring. New Zealand is a huge, huge country, with about four people that live there and about 10 billion sheep. So there's this thing in England that we say about people from New Zealand are sheep-shaggers.

"So I cut right to the chase and I said, 'Tell me. Are you a sheep-shagger?' And he said, 'Excuse me?' And I said, 'You know, do you (have sex with) sheep?' His mouth dropped and he didn't know what to say.

"After that, they basically told me to pack up and go home."

- NZPA