Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography

by Sharon Osbourne; Penelope Dening

  And it was an unbelievable day. There was all the buildup, the flyby, and Brian May, my old friend from Queen, playing "God Save the Queen" on the roof of Buckingham Palace. It was amazing to be a part of it, to be in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. And backstage there was a great atmosphere, and the artists could go anywhere and there was a special cocktail party for them inside the palace. We had the best time. I wanted to savor every minute. I was determined never to forget a moment, and I did what I always do and took mental snapshots of everything; it's like my little Rolodex in my mind.

  Ozzy absolutely stole the night--and I say that not just because he's my husband, he really did. He had Tony Iommi with him, and Phil Collins was on drums, and he had Paul McCartney's bass player and keyboard player. For Ozzy to work with his hero, and the guy who had entertained us all those years on the tour buses, was something he could never have imagined. His early inspiration was the Beatles, and now he was sharing a stage with Paul McCartney.

  It was twenty, fifty times better than Live Aid. The people arranging the show for Her Majesty did a great job, and it was well rounded musically: from Paul McCartney to Shirley Bassey, Rod Stewart, Stevie Winwood, Elton, even Cliff Richard. Ozzy and Ray Davies. It really was the best of British. The whole of England that week was so happy, and the weather was perfect. As for the audience at the palace, it was as if someone had sprayed fairy dust over the place.

  That night, after finally leaving the party, when Ozzy and I were in bed, we were just marveling at how surreal it all was. Ozzy had always been famous, I had always been a name in my business world, but the girl from Brixton and the boy from Birmingham were never top of anybody's list. It was always, "Oh, she comes from that gangster father. And he's from that awful heavy metal group." We were hardly Sting and Trudie. We weren't the aristocracy of the music business, like Bono, Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton. You would hardly see us sitting on the front row of a fashion show in Milan Fucking Fashion Week. Nobody had ever invited us to anything like that. And now we were on everybody's list.

  The next day it was business as usual and we flew back to LA. I was longing to see the kids and tell them all about it. None of them had been able to come because they were all busy with other things.

  The first thing in my diary was a physical. As a signed-up hypochondriac, Ozzy is always having physicals, and he'd just had a colonoscopy and they'd found a polyp, nothing serious, but Ozzy had begged me to have a full physical. And I hate all that stuff. I was never ill anyway. Apart from the monthly checks I'd had after the stomach band was put on, I never went to the doctor's.

  So I had everything done. I was horribly anemic, they said. And it was true that when I'd been in London I had felt very tired and drained, but I had put that down to the strain of doing something like live television. And I am always tired, always have been. But they said I was so anemic that I must be bleeding from somewhere, either my bum or my stomach. So I had this procedure done where they give you a general anesthetic, then put tubes down your stomach and up your bum with miniature cameras on them. The stomach one was clear, but they found two lumps in my colon. The doctor who performed the procedure showed me a picture he'd taken, and I was like, What the fuck are those two giant mushrooms doing up my arse? Because that's what they looked like, complete with stalks, minus only the little leprechauns sitting underneath. He'd removed them, he said, and they'd do a biopsy and I'd get the results in a week.

  A bit of me was thinking, Fuck, that can't be normal, but another bit was thinking, Well, Ozzy had his polyp, perhaps this is what a polyp looks like. And I was preoccupied with getting Kelly together to go to New York to make her first album, Shut Up, and we were gearing up for the start of Ozzfest 2002 and Jack was just leaving school, so basically I didn't think any more about it. Of course, I showed Ozzy the picture, and he said, "Eurrrrrerk," as anybody would.

  So Kelly and Jack and Aimee and Melinda and I fly into New York. And because it's a charter plane we can take the dogs. If we'd gone on a commercial plane, we would never have gotten out of the terminal, because by this time The Osbournes had gone manic and MTV had asked us to do a second series. So we had the film crew with us, and I was feeling so up. The last few months had been like a dream. The success of the show, the White House, the Queen's Golden Jubilee, and I said to them, "Life is too good. Everything my whole family touches turns to gold. I feel like something's going to happen to kick me in the arse because I cannot believe that life is this good."

  I just said it. And they have it on film.

  So we get Kelly settled in her apartment in Trump Tower, getting the kitchen filled up with groceries, and it's a six-week lease because that's how long the record will take to complete. This was going to be a real holiday for us. We were going to be doing Manhattan. That night I was starting by having dinner with a girlfriend named Michele Anthony, one of the very few women who has really made it to the top in the record industry.

  She and I have very similar backgrounds. Her father was Dee Anthony, who managed Peter Frampton. He was the first man I ever saw wear a diamond earring. He was like a benign American version of my father.

  Her father wanted her to work in the office, but she wanted an education. So Michele put herself through university. Now she's a brilliant lawyer and second in command at Sony. She has a great knowledge of music, a great musical background to draw from. She chose education, and I didn't, and that's one of the few things in my life that I regret, but I could never have gone her route. You have to be corporate material, and I'm not. I cannot keep my mouth shut, and I would just say Go Fuck Yourself if I didn't agree with something. I like to think of myself as a really good quarterback. I can get people motivated, and get them to go beyond what they would usually do. In that way, perhaps, I might have been good in a big company. But no big company could risk having a loose cannon like me around the place.

  So Michele and I had a lovely dinner together in a restaurant in downtown Manhattan, just chatting and catching up on each other's lives. It was a warm summer's evening and I wanted to walk back to my hotel, but Michele had her driver so I didn't. That night it seemed that everything in life was perfect, even the weather. Our entire family was happy and good and healthy. Everyone was in a good place. Ozzy's tour was huge, Kelly was doing a record, everything we did was "fucking brilliant'--it wasn't just good, it was "sensational," it was "groundbreaking." You would go to a newsstand and The Osbournes would be on the cover of every magazine. And this was not just America, this was worldwide. Life was good, life was sweet.

  When I got back to the apartment, the MTV guys were still there, and I remember thinking, God, don't you have homes to go to? Then I went in to see Kelly, and the phone rang, and it was Dana from my office.

  "Sharon, are you sitting down?"

  I was sitting cross-legged on Kelly's bed as I had just come in to say good night.

  "Go on, Dana, give it to me." Dana is such a drama queen. She can make you feel like a cannibal for eating a fucking oyster.

  "The doctor's just called and the results have come back from your colonoscopy. And you've got cancer. Colon cancer. You've got to get back here as soon as possible."

  I put down the phone, and I could hear that the television was on next door, that muffled sound of canned laughter and bad music that Melinda and Jack were watching. Aimee, I knew, was in her room because I'd just put my head round the door. And I said, "Sorry, guys, I've got to go to the bathroom," because the MTV crew were still filming. Because my stomach had floored, my stomach was in my fucking shoes. You've got cancer. Whenever I'm really nervous, or in great shock, the first thing that happens is my stomach drops, and then I shit. So my stomach was like bang, in my shoes, and I ran to the toilet, and I shat.

  And the MTV crew were always very good; they knew us so well they knew when it wasn't appropriate to stay, and by the time I came out of the bathroom they had gone. And then I start running up and down the hallway, up and down, up and down, and I hear Kelly
calling to Aimee to come quick. And I can't stop, and I'm just moving, moving. And they're like, "Mummy, Mummy, what are you doing? What's the matter?" And I sat in the corner in the hallway and held out my hands to them and pulled them to me and I said, "I've got cancer."

  The kids were just hysterical and we all sat on the floor, the four of us, and held and cuddled. And then I called Ozzy. He was in Doheny getting ready for the start of Ozzfest, and I just said, "I'm getting a plane and I'm coming home now."

  "But what's happened? What's the matter, darling?"

  And I told him, and you could hear him collapse onto the floor. His knees just crumpled.

  "I'm coming home, Dadda. I'll be home tonight."

  We got a private plane, didn't take one piece of luggage, just left as we were, Kelly, Aimee and Jack and the dogs. During the flight I kept falling asleep then waking up again. Kelly was sitting beside me, and Aimee and Jack would just hold my hand, stroking me, holding me. And when the plane touched down at LA, a golf cart came up to the steps of the plane and there were Tony and Ozzy. And Ozzy had put a suit on, and a silk shirt and a tie and a beautiful coat. He had dressed himself up to meet me. And he looked gorgeous. And he smelled gorgeous. And I came out of that plane and my legs were like rubber, the children were all hanging on to me for dear life, and we all got in the golf cart and went to the terminal building, and then we all came home, all got into bed together and stayed there.

  Next morning my surgeon, Ed Phillips, came around. He'd seen my video results. They stick a camera up your bloody arse and take a tour. He brought with him a cancer specialist, Dr. Barry Rosenbloom, who was so reassuring, a fabulous man. He made me feel so safe, so calm, so don't-even-worry-about-this, this-is-nothing. I was in stage two, of four stages. As I was otherwise completely healthy, he said, I was going to be fine. In these two doctors' opinion the cancer hadn't spread anywhere else. It had nothing to do with the stomach band. I wouldn't need chemo, unless it had spread, which they thought was unlikely. But although the tumors--because that's what they were--had already been removed when I had the colonoscopy, they would need to take more of the surrounding tissue out, namely a couple of feet of my colon.

  "But if you need time," Dr. Phillips said, "you can wait a week."

  No. I wanted it done immediately. I felt foul. I had to get this thing out of my body. If I could have gotten a brush and put it up my arse, or a vacuum cleaner and put it up my arse, I would have. I would have swallowed bleach. I felt like I had an alien inside my body and I wanted it out.

  I was taken in at seven the next morning. There was no need to tell me not to eat; I hadn't eaten since I'd heard the news. The kids were giving me ice cubes because I couldn't even drink. I couldn't brush my teeth, I couldn't even wash. I was stinking.

  I didn't want the kids to come into the hospital, so only Ozzy came with me, and Tony. Bobby drove. Dear Bobby, who was going through throat cancer at the same time and, as it turned out, hadn't long to live.

  I was taken straight into the operating room. The rest of that day is only a haze. Ozzy and Dr. Phillips were there and took me back to my room. They gave me a pain-relieving pump for morphine that you operate yourself, but I wouldn't use it. And Ozzy kept saying, "Use it, Sharon, just fucking use it."

  "No. I hate this shit." And I did. I'd had it before and I get nauseous. I would rather suffer excruciating pain than be sick. For me, vomiting is the worst thing in the world. But in the end, I had to, and even then Ozzy would complain.

  "You haven't used enough, darling."

  "I have."

  "I'm telling you, Sharon, you've used nothing. Bloody use it."

  The pain was like the most terrible burning, burning through your crotch and your arse and between your legs, it was unlike any other pain I had ever had. Four days later I was allowed to go home. And then came the phone call. The cancer had spread. I had to start chemotherapy in three weeks' time. Again, my stomach floored. But then it was like, OK. We'll deal with it, we'll get through this. But I was fucking terrified.

  Because all my life it wasn't cancer itself I'd been frightened of. It was always the chemo. I have known so many people who've gone through it and I was petrified. Charlie, a man who had a field opposite Welders where he kept horses, had had chemo for colon cancer, and sometimes he'd come in for a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea, and I'd see what it had done to him. And a girlfriend of mine, Michele Myers, who I'd known in the seventies, she'd gone through a lot of chemo and I saw her die, and I saw the agony she went through.

  And lying there, feeling like shit, I kept thinking about all the good things I'd had in my life, and I thought: now it's time for your pain. It won't last but you have to experience it to become a well-rounded person. And then my attitude about the chemo changed. Far from being frightened of it, I welcomed it. I couldn't wait to get there. I was like, Bring It On. I want this shit out of my body.

  Meantime the cameras were still in the house, because I decided early on we should carry on with The Osbournes. I could have said that's enough, leave us alone now, but that would have terrified my children because they'd have known how sick I really was. If I'd asked the cameras to go, they'd have had no distractions.

  I knew that I needed my own space away from the beehive that Doheny had become. So Ozzy had rented me a house in Malibu. Usually you can't take dogs to rental houses, but this place was very big and the owners were planning to knock it down and do a total rebuild, so they said we could take the dogs, that we could do whatever we wanted. And it was so quiet there. The phone didn't ring every five minutes, and the camera crew would come just every other day. I had made Ozzy carry on with the tour, and Kelly was back in New York doing the record, just as we'd planned, with Melinda to keep an eye on her. Jack and Aimee would go back and forth between Malibu and Doheny. And Maryshe, our housekeeper from Welders, came over to take care of me, and to give her a break there was a lady by the name of Simone, whose boyfriend worked for us. Dale Skjerseth, always known as Opie, was our production manager for years. Sadly, he was eventually headhunted by the Rolling Stones. Simone wasn't working at the time, so she had all the time in the world to spend with me.

  It was a very weird journey.

  April 21, 2005, 3:30 p.m.

  Doheny Road: my bedroom

  I am in bed waiting for a conference call to be put through with our lawyers. Not for the first time in our lives, Ozzy and I are being sued. However, it is the first time that two totally unconnected people are suing us for the same thing at the same time.

  Our attorneys are led by Howard Weitzman. We have known Howard since Ozzy was sued by the parents of a boy who committed suicide in 1986. Howard got the case thrown out, and he and his wife, Margaret, have been family friends ever since. He's one of the highest-profile lawyers in California, and has represented Courtney Love, Michael Jackson, O. J. Simpson and John DeLorean, and if he'd been around at the time probably Jesus Christ could have done with his services. His team is just as extraordinary. Orin Snyder used to work for the district attorney in New York City. He really cares about the vulnerable people involved--in this case, the kids and Ozzy--and he's spent two to three years of his life on this case, dedicating hours to it. Elise Zealand started out as a criminal lawyer, and successfully defended two innocent murder suspects, and Ashlie Beringer has got balls of steel and is spot-on in her judgment of people. These two women are both total powerhouses. If that wasn't enough, they look like two girls from The Practice. We couldn't be better represented.

  Even so, it has been three years of torture. It's overshadowed everything. It's been unbelievable pressure on the kids, and the thought that after everything they've gone through in the last three or four years, somebody wants to come in and take their money is grotesque. Jack was fifteen, Kelly was sixteen. Who would think of taking a fifteen-year-old's money?

  So what did we do that was so terribly, terribly wrong? Answer: we had a hit show.

  America is litigation heaven. From passenge
rs in the back of taxis claiming they will never work again because their driver pulled up too quick and they banged their thumb, to fathers of teenagers claiming that ten minutes at a rock concert turned them deaf. Anyone can sue, and if they think there's a pot of gold in it for them they usually do.

  In our case we're being sued over The Osbournes. Two separate lawsuits. Two totally unconnected people are claiming that it was their fucking idea. At one point there was even a third, but he pulled out when it emerged that MTV had already started filming by the time this arsehole said he met with me. But even to get to that point we needed lawyers, and so we still had to pay. The other two cases are still ongoing, though.

  The nightmare began in July 2002, more than four years ago now, when I was quietly lying in Cedars-Sinai having a blood transfusion, less than a month after my operation for cancer. I'd collapsed at Doheny and been rushed by Jack to the hospital, and this moron comes into my room while I was semiconscious having three pints of plasma dripped into my body, prods me with the envelope and then leaves it on the table. That was me being served. The doctors went fucking insane.

  Appropriately enough, that's what they call these people: ambulance chasers--law firms that take on cases on a contingency basis. In other words, no win, no pay. They're basically gamblers. They can afford to lose nine out of ten cases for that one big payout that will cover the rest. It's a numbers game. The more cases these people take on, the more chance they have of winning.

  So what are these two claimants actually saying? One is a production company called Threshold TV and they claim that I "engaged in a deliberate and wrongful rip-off of the property." I have never denied that I talked to these people, but what I was discussing with them had nothing to do with us as a family, it was simply about TV deals relating to Ozzy and Ozzfest. They have requested a trial by jury.