Birmingham's Saying Goodbye to Ozzy — Properly

A year ago this month, Birmingham lined the streets for Ozzy Osbourne's funeral procession. Next Wednesday, 22 July, the city's doing something rather more in character: throwing him a party.

Ozzy Day is a free, city-wide programme of live music, public art and tributes, delivered by Central BID and OPUS (Outdoor Places Unusual Spaces) alongside Birmingham City Council, Birmingham New Street and Westside BID. Rather than one big stage, it's spread across the places that actually shaped Ozzy's story: the Black Sabbath Bench and Bridge, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, New Street Station, the Bullring, Selfridges and Martineau Place.

The Bostin Brass band are on the bill for several of those spots, playing brass arrangements of Sabbath and Ozzy classics. If the name rings a bell, it's because they're the same band who played as his funeral procession wound through the city on 30 July last year — this time, thankfully, for a much happier occasion.

There's a genuinely unusual booking too: the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra will perform in the Bullring at 12:15pm. Not every city can say its full symphony orchestra has set up between the shop fronts for a heavy metal legend, but Birmingham's never been every city.

For anyone after a souvenir, Selfridges Bullring will stock a limited-edition Ozzy Day t-shirt from the 22nd, while stocks last. The front carries a triumphant graphic from his farewell show, Back to the Beginning; the back lists all 52 gigs he played in Birmingham across his career — which, if nothing else, is a serious commitment to home turf.

Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery's Ozzy Osbourne: Working Class Hero exhibition, featuring his throne and other memorabilia, continues to run alongside the day's events for anyone wanting more than a passing tribute.

It's free, it's spread right across the city centre, and it doesn't require a ticket — just a willingness to stand in the Bullring and watch an orchestra play Paranoid. Prince of Darkness or not, that's about as Birmingham a tribute as they come.

If you've been stuck on Birmingham's social housing waiting list wondering where all the homes have gone, part of the answer might be sitting on a short-term let site with someone else's name on the listing. The council now has a new way to check.

Birmingham City Council has joined an industry-first data-sharing partnership between the Cabinet Office and Airbnb, announced nationally on 8 July and confirmed locally this week. It lets participating councils cross-check their social housing tenancy records against Airbnb's own listings, flagging homes that appear to be let out on the platform by tenants who were never supposed to be subletting them in the first place.

Birmingham joins a small first wave of authorities on the scheme, alongside several London boroughs, Edinburgh City Council and Anglesey Council. Any listing confirmed as unauthorised gets pulled from Airbnb, and the underlying property can, in principle, be handed back to a family who actually needs it.

The numbers involved are bigger than you might expect. Early results across all participating councils have already flagged 470 potential fraud cases. Nationally, it's estimated that around 5,800 social homes are being illegally sublet on short-term rental platforms in England at any one time — and the government puts the cost of each individual case of tenancy fraud at roughly £78,300 to the taxpayer, once lost rent, admin and enforcement are all factored in.

The penalties for anyone caught are serious: eviction, fines, and up to two years in prison, depending on the scale of the fraud.

Birmingham isn't starting from zero here, either. The council says it recovered 36 fraudulently sublet properties over the past year through its existing enforcement work, before this new Airbnb data-sharing arrangement was even in place. The hope is that direct access to listings data will let the team find the rest faster, rather than relying purely on tip-offs and manual checks.

It's not a glamorous story, and nobody's cutting a ribbon for it. But for the thousands of Birmingham families waiting for a council home, a faster route to freeing up properties that were never legitimately let out in the first place is about as practical a bit of good news as local government gets.

Two men have been charged with attempted murder following a stabbing in Victoria Square, one of Birmingham's busiest and best-known public spaces, on the evening of 23 June.

An 18-year-old man suffered injuries described by police as potentially life-changing. A 17-year-old boy was also assaulted during the same incident and sustained facial injuries.

Niazal Rahmanullah, 25, of Birmingham, was arrested on 9 July following further police enquiries. He has been charged with attempted murder, wounding, possession of a knife, and violent disorder.

Obaidullah Mamozai, 28, of Telford, has also been charged with attempted murder and assault. He has been remanded in custody.

Both men are due to appear before Birmingham Crown Court, with a hearing scheduled for 6 August.

As the case is now active before the courts, West Midlands Police have limited what further detail can be shared at this stage. It's worth restating plainly: a charge is an allegation, not a finding of guilt, and both men are entitled to a fair trial. We'll follow up if and when the case reaches court.

Solihull Summer Fest turns ten this weekend, and it's marking the anniversary with the kind of line-up that would have seemed a stretch for its first outing a decade ago.

Tonight's headliner is Craig David presents TS5 — part live set, part DJ set, blending garage-era hits like 7 Days, Fill Me In, Walking Away and Rise & Fall with his own club remixes. It's the sort of set that turns a park field into a dancefloor fairly quickly.

Tomorrow it's a different decade entirely, as Culture Club take the stage fronted by Boy George, running through Karma Chameleon, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, Time (Clock of the Heart) and I'll Tumble 4 Ya. Going from 2000s garage to 80s new romantic in the space of 24 hours is a fairly ambitious ask of one park, but Tudor Grange has form.

Both days come with a supporting bill that's stronger than a lot of festivals twice the size, including Gabrielle, Fleur East and Sigala across the weekend.

Gates open at 11am on both days, with music running from midday through to 10:30pm, when everyone's asked to head home. It's a family-friendly event throughout, not just an evening one, so there's plenty to do before the headline sets even start.

Tudor Grange Park itself makes the whole thing easy to get to — it sits within easy walking distance of Solihull town centre and the train station, so there's no need to plan a complicated journey home once Boy George has finished for the night.

Ten years in, Solihull Summer Fest has quietly become one of the region's better-kept secrets for a big weekend out without a trek to a arena or a stadium. This lineup might be the one that changes that.

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✅ YESTERDAY'S ANSWER

Yesterday we asked: Which fantasy author grew up near Sarehole Mill and Perrott's Folly in Edgbaston — buildings said to have inspired towers in his novels?

The answer: A) J.R.R. Tolkien.

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