Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography

by Sharon Osbourne; Penelope Dening

  Even when I was older and could make my own sandwiches, half the time there was no bread in the bin. So we'd buy some fries from the fish-and-chips shop, or pick up a bag of chips from the corner store. In the summer, we might walk to the cafe in Brockwell Park, an old building that seemed very grand in the middle of all that green and trees, and it was on top of a hill, so you could see right over London, and David would watch the birds.

  Brixton then was a good place for kids to grow up. It was a poor part of London, like Compton in Los Angeles, which meant it was cheap. There were the market arcades under the railway line full of little stalls, like the pie and mash shop with its metal trough of jellied eels that they would chop up, which made me gag but fascinated me at the same time. And then there were the Indian shops with saris hung up outside the little entrances, all those amazing colors and strange foreign smells.

  Just up from the market was Woolworth's where, as well as spending any money we might have, my brother and I would go stealing candy. My role was to go up and ask for something, and when the assistant went looking for it, David would stuff his pockets with anything he could find: play cigarettes, blackjacks, fruit salads, flying saucers.

  The other place we stole from was a tiny candy store that was the only building still standing on the World War II bombsite behind our house, at the end of an alley. The lady who ran it was very old so taking anything was easy: flying saucers, sherbet dips and Jubblies, a pyramid of iced orange that you used to squeeze.

  In those days my brother was very industrious in trying to find ways of making money. When it was Guy Fawkes night he used to dress me up, put me in an old-fashioned carriage with big wheels, stick me outside the pub, and I'd be panhandling bait. My father was a Black and White Minstrel for a while, on the hit TV show that was broadcast on Saturday nights. It would never be allowed now. In America it's called blackface, exactly what Al Jolson did, and it was probably the highspot of my father's singing career--so there was always plenty of greasepaint hanging around the house. David would black me up, then find a bit of black cloth to drape me in, shove on an old hat and push me along to the pub, and we'd get all the Irish drunks as they came out.

  Those were the good days. Bad days were when I'd be put in the coalhole, which was like a horrible underground cupboard off Nigel's bedroom. Coal still got stored in there--delivered down a chute from the street--and whenever my brother or I misbehaved, my parents would lock us in there for what seemed like forever, but was probably only an hour or an hour and a half. It was horrible. And the worst thing was the spiders, and scufflings that David said were rats.

  My grandmother Nana lived in Prestwich, a smart suburb of Manchester, and I absolutely adored her. She's probably the only woman I ever met who was bald, and to hide it she had this terrible combover, a real wraparound hairdo (think Donald Trump)--except hers would wrap around twice. When we were out--Nana was a big one for afternoon tea at the Midland Hotel--she wore hats to cover it up. Hats with matching gloves and matching handbag. Everyone wore hats in those days, if they were ladies. There were other things she taught me about being a lady, like using rose water and witch hazel on your skin and not sitting on the lavatory seat when you were out because you could catch things. Unspecified things, but which later I discovered included babies when you didn't want them. So she showed me how to cover the seat with overlapping sheets of shiny toilet paper and then try to sit down quick before they fluttered away.

  Whenever my parents were on tour in the north, they'd take us out of school and leave us with her. They didn't give a shit about the academic side of life. But the atmosphere between my mother and Nana was terrible, and until my parents left the house it was like walking on eggshells, so I couldn't wait for them to leave.

  Being with Nana made me feel warm and safe. She was motherly. She would cook for me. She would tuck me up in bed. And she was very house-proud and would scrub the front step every day. Everything in that house was scrubbed and cleaned till it shone.

  She couldn't have been more different from my other grandmother, who unfortunately I saw more of because she lived not far from us in Clapham, just off Wandsworth Common. She'd been a dancer like my mother, and again like my mother she now ran a theatrical rooming house. Dolly O'Shea had long white hair that she wore down to her shoulders, curled under and tied with a huge red satin bow, and she always had dark red lipstick, like Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, that went over the lines of her mouth, and I never saw her without a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. She was incredibly ugly and had the biggest nose I have ever seen. A real Fagin nose. She frightened me and she stank, stank of her fanny and BO, and her flat stank of fried food. She adored my brother--she even paid for him to go to stage school in the beginning--but she hated me. If she'd been Chinese she'd have been the sort of person who had the girls put out to die.

  And I remember so clearly clinging to the banisters on Angell Road when my dad said we had to go and see her, and me saying, "Please don't make me! Please, please let me stay home!" And then he would whack me over the knuckles so I'd let go of the banister and then he'd drag me into the car.

  My father was soon going farther afield with his tours, mostly to American air bases in Germany. There were four in Frankfurt alone, each one of them full of bored GIs waiting to be entertained. We never stayed on the bases themselves, but sometimes we'd be allowed in to watch the show. He could keep the fucking show; what I wanted was the PX, the general store with all the American magazines and comics, Batman and Superman. But the best thing was the food, milk shakes and burgers--there was nothing like that in fifties Brixton. But usually at night they'd leave us back in the boardinghouse or hotel, where my brother and I would run riot, breaking into the kitchens, playing around with the elevators and generally causing havoc.

  The other thing I remember about Germany was Christmas. My father had a partner named Gisela Gumpher who had a house in the Black Forest where we spent two Christmases running. In Angell Road we never had what you could call a proper Christmas, and so this was my first experience of what fun and how happy a family-type Christmas could be, and I never forgot it.

  Religion was never a big deal in our house. My father used his religion only when it suited him, like speaking Yiddish. As a lot of other people in the business were Jewish, it was a way of keeping some people in and other people out--perhaps even my mother. Though, having been brought up with it, I understood everything.

  Being Jewish, he told me, was something to be proud of, and he gave me a pair of Star of David earrings and a little Star of David to put around my neck. I had no idea really what it meant, it was just a necklace as far as I was concerned. But one day when my brother and I were coming home from playing in the park, some kids began to taunt us, calling us dirty Jews. I hurled myself on them, and suddenly David was there too, punching and kicking and scratching, till they were the ones backing off. It didn't affect me. They could just as well have said I was an alien or a robot for all the difference it made. That was just how it was.

  As for my mother, she never mentioned religion, never wore a cross, never went near a priest. But Kath McMurray, whom she had known since they worked in the same dance troupe before the war and who was one of her few real friends, was very Catholic. As Teresa, her daughter, was a friend of mine, I'd sometimes go to their church with her and wait while she went into the confessional box, dillydallying around until she came out. My parents' line was that we were "cosmopolitan." And it was "whatever you want to do." It was the same with any other kind of prejudice. Being in the business and living in Brixton made us color-blind. There were no feelings about being gay, black, nothing.

  In 1960 my father experienced the nearest thing he would get to a religious conversion. It was called rock and roll. In January he had emceed a tour on which Gene Vincent was topping the bill, and seeing the effect Gene was having on teenagers, he decided that was the way to go, and within a year, promoter Don Arden had succeeded in brin
ging over Gene Vincent. From then on it was like Angell Road was on speed. Gene was England's first real rock god, wearing black leather instead of a suit, and with sell-out performances and screaming girls he was soon my father's first cash cow. The support bands would change, but Gene would always be the crowd puller and he was part of our lives for nearly five years.

  And then it was just a roller coaster: Brenda Lee, Connie Francis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis--he arrived just a few days after his three-year-old son had drowned. In Cardiff he caused a riot when he played "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On." And then in Mitcham, just down the road from us, he ended up destroying his piano--the first time anybody had done anything like that.

  But the one I will never forget is Sam Cooke. I thought he was the most handsome man I had ever seen in my life, and he smelled fantastic and he wore these tight black high-waisted matador trousers onstage, and whenever he'd see me he would kiss me and I knew I would blush every single time, because I was so much in love with him. I was nine, and I would go and sit in the audience when he performed and I never did that with anybody else. But after that tour I never saw him again: he was shot dead in 1964.

  I remember one night being taken to Victoria Station, because my mum and dad were seeing off Bill Haley on the midnight train to Europe. My father used to wave all the artists off--as the promoter he had to make sure everyone was on the train and accounted for--then he would go and join them a couple of days later. He'd always be there for the Big Welcome, and then there'd be the Big Wave Off, although I don't think this kind of thing was that unusual in those days, because everything was far more courteous. Now the only place you'll get a promoter coming to the airport to meet you is Japan.

  Gene Vincent and the rest of them might have been getting girls weeping and screaming in the aisles, but to me they were just people my father worked with. These artists just happened to be musicians, as opposed to ventriloquists or comedians. Some of them were arseholes, some of them were nice--just like everybody else.

  One problem my father hadn't foreseen with bringing over Americans was that they had to be paid up front, and when you're talking about a whole tour, and these people were being paid over PS1,000 a week, that was a lot. Fifty percent of the entire fee had to go to the William Morris Agency in New York before the artist even left America, and then the balance would have to be handed to them personally every night, in cash, and some even wanted that in advance. A year or two later I remember being on the road with my dad with Little Richard and Chuck Berry and them literally refusing to play. It was like, "Yeah. We go on, but we get the money first."

  My father lived a cash-only existence. Although he carried around a checkbook twice the normal size, it didn't matter what size it was or how many zeroes were on it--you could have filled it with fucking zeroes--nobody wanted anybody's check. Not in rock and roll. It had to be bills.

  Carrying so much cash on him was the reason my father gave for employing the "heavies," as they were called, who would be "handy" in difficult situations. They'd start out as drivers and if all went well he would bring them into the company as tour managers. These heavies would come from the fringes of show business, always recommended by somebody who knew somebody. The first one I really remember was Peter Grant, mainly because he would pick David and me up from school on days he had nothing else scheduled. He began his career as a bouncer in the 2i's club in Soho (where people like Cliff Richard and Adam Faith had started out) and then was a stunt double and bit-part player in films, or at least that was what he used to tell us. His first job for my father was driving Gene Vincent, and then he progressed to tour managing. With all the things he had going on, my father couldn't handle everything himself anymore.

  Once, when my parents were on tour somewhere we couldn't go, we had to stay six weeks with Dolly in her flat in Elsynge Road. As this was too far for us to go to our usual school, we were put into one near Clapham Junction, and I hated it. Unlike Clermont, which was an ordinary house, this was a great Victorian redbrick building with echoing rooms that rang with the sound of desks banging and bells. There were about a hundred people in every class, and I didn't know anybody. As for the playground, it was more like a battleground. The first thing I did was tell them my father was a policeman. I couldn't possibly have explained what he really did--it was far too embarrassing. The last thing you want as a child is to stand out. And I stood out enough anyway, because I wasn't at school regularly, because my parents didn't participate in school life at all.

  We never mixed with anybody who wasn't connected with the industry, other than kids at school, and we weren't even supposed to bring them back home. By now both rooms on the ground floor were used as offices and there was always some drama going on. Gene Vincent was always drunk and he'd regularly be waving a gun around. Or someone had done something against my father, and he'd be threatening to kill the bastards. Violence was never far away from my father. From as early as I can remember, people were frightened of him. Although he was quite a small man in terms of his height, because of the singing training he'd done as a boy in the synagogue, he had this barrel chest he was so proud of, and he'd take anybody on.

  In the early sixties my father had got involved with the Star Club in Hamburg; later he became a partner with Manfred Weissleder. The Star Club is famous for being the place where the Beatles first made their name. John Lennon idolized Gene Vincent, and knowing his connection with my father, asked Don if he would manage them, and my father said no. It was like, "English rock and roll? Don't make me laugh." The Beatles were just copycats, he said. They wouldn't last. He was only interested in Americans, and so he continued to bring them over: Carl Perkins, Brian Hyland, Brenda Lee, Little Eva, who was only five years older than me. But tastes in music had changed and he lost money hand over fist.

  Apart from artists, the only other regular visitors to Angell Road were repo men and process servers, although they were never allowed past the front door. My brother said he could tell who it was by the knock. I couldn't. But it was me they sent to open it, because I was small for my age and the idea was they'd feel sorry for me. And yet once you saw them, standing on the step, you knew who they were by their lack of expression and the way they were dressed. It was like a uniform: the raincoat, the trilby hat. It was born in you to know. And it was like, Oh God, so the TV's going back again to Granada or DER, because he hasn't paid the installments, or they're coming for the furniture because something hasn't been paid for. Or else it was the car. Sometimes we had a car, sometimes we didn't.

  My father never believed in saving for a rainy day. So when the coffers were full, he'd be throwing money around, buying my mother jewelry and fur coats, taking us to the Talk of the Town in Leicester Square for a slap-up meal and Judy Garland, but then I'd overhear them talking and he'd be saying things like, "Christ, Pads, ten grand. Where am I going to get that from?" And so the jewels would go down to the pawnshop, until eventually she learned to hide them where he couldn't find them.

  It was as if my brother and I had two lives. There was the one at home, with the writs and the threats and the shouting on the phone. Then there was the street life, the park life, the skipping school and going to the cinema life. David would buy one ticket, and once inside he'd go straight to the emergency exit and let me in. We had it down to a fine art. It was an easy come, easy go kind of existence. We did what we wanted, and nobody seemed to care one way or the other.

  When we were younger we'd go to Saturday matinees at the Ritzy--this was official, and our mum would give us the money. But when David decided it was too babyish for him, we moved on to dancing at the Locarno. We'd put on our best clothes--in my case a party dress and silver sandals--and take the bus up to Streatham. I couldn't have been more than ten, if that; officially you had to be older, but my brother was a practiced liar by then. I can't remember it being a problem. It was magical in there--everyone in their best and dancing under a spinning mirror ball, and I have loved mirror balls ever since.
But it could also be a bit strange, dancing to something like "The Loco-motion" by Little Eva and thinking, I know her.

  April 20, 2005, 10.00 a.m.

  Doheny Road, Beverly Hills

  A knock at my bedroom door.

  "Sharon?"

  "Yeseeee . . ."

  "Are you decent?"

  "Of course not, Mikey. I make it a point to be positively in-decent."

  In steps Michael Guarracino, who has been with me fourteen years. He hesitates. I pull my dressing gown around me, and he blushes as if I had just flashed my tits. Michael is the straight man to my comic. He never says fuck or shit or arse or prick, or even willy, but then neither is he fazed by anything that happens here. Except possibly yesterday. Two days ago I had a colonic irrigation (don't even go there), and Ozzy was complaining to anybody who would listen how he'd been kept awake by my blasting away throughout the night. "Put it this way," he said, "if I'd have lit a match the whole of Beverly Hills would have gone up, and there were twenty-five dead pigeons on the balcony!" When it was Michael's turn to hear the story, he turned white.

  "Are you telling me you've never heard your wife fart?" Ozzy said, his eyes wide in amazement. At which point Michael decided he had an urgent phone call to make and went out. Probably to be sick. He is the perfect antidote to my wilder side.

  In his hand he's holding a pile of papers, e-mails and faxes and documents. Things he was working on yesterday, things that came in from London overnight. Things he wants me to read and sign and make decisions about. Things in all likelihood I don't feel like doing.

  "So what delicious naughtiness have you for me this morning?" I say, shifting Minnie onto my lap.

  He hands me a pile of papers half an inch thick.

  "Do you know what you want to do about this, Sharon?"

  I look at the top sheet.