Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography

by Sharon Osbourne; Penelope Dening

  The other is a film producer whom I met only once. A year after our meeting he sent the family a script. It was predictably hokey. At the meeting that followed, we unanimously agreed that we didn't like it. The kids went along because there was talk of them playing themselves if they proved capable of acting and learning lines. It never got to the proposed screen test.

  Until I saw the script, I gave this man the benefit of the doubt. It could have been groundbreaking TV. It could have been like The Office. But it wasn't. It was generic bullshit. And so we said no thank you and moved on with our lives.

  At no stage was The Osbournes ever scripted. It was a reality show. So anyone who talks about writing scripts is talking out of his arse. There were no scripts. Never. Not one. How could anyone ever script Ozzy? Or what about my cancer? Great plot line, that.

  If anyone can take credit for what became The Osbournes, it should be God.

  19

  Crisis

  When I went in for my first bout of chemotherapy, a month since the day I had my cancer removed, I had no idea what to expect. Yes, they give you the literature, and they're very kind, but you don't really have any idea what's going to happen to your body once they hook you up. And hook you up is exactly what they do. Before I started, I had a port put into my chest where the cocktail of chemicals would go in, and this port is a hook, and the nurse who would hook me up was called Gabriel, and I called him my angel Gabriel.

  There were three different drips going in at the same time. Gabriel would just turn the tap, and that was it. This cocktail of acid would begin moving like a glacier, trickling down through my arms into my fingertips, through my legs into my toes, and I would embrace it. I was like, Yes, thank God.

  I went once a week for three hours and the staff at Cedars-Sinai are beyond praise. The MTV crew filmed everything, so there was always someone to talk to. Then I had my work to catch up on and Michael would come in and we'd go through my messages, and I found that if I worked through it, I didn't think too much about what was going on.

  The day after the chemo was always the worst. That's when you heave, barf, throw up and shit. Even the smell of orange juice would be enough. I would gag at the sourness of it. By the second week of treatment I was so weak I was urinating in my bed, just because I didn't have the strength to make it to the bathroom.

  I would drift off to the sound of the surf crashing on the shore outside the window. The sea is so close in Malibu, it drowns out every other noise, and in a way it even drowned out my thoughts. Its rhythm never stopped. It would lull me to sleep, and it would be there when I woke up. Timeless. People would send books for me to read, but I read very little, because I was so, so tired. Most of the time I slept, and had to be woken up to drink and eat. If I'd been left to myself I would have just lain there and rotted.

  The children would come and go. Maryshe and Simone would take turns looking after me. Ozzy would come when he wasn't performing but I made him keep to the schedule because I saw that he was frightened, terrified that I was going to die, so that it was better for him to go and do his thing and be away from it all. There was a period when he did take time off, and other bands were really kind, covering his spots. This was when, four weeks into my chemo, I slipped into a coma. Because getting the balance of chemicals right is all trial and error, and depends on your individual metabolism.

  It turned out that my white-blood-cell count was on the floor. I had just had my fourth treatment and was staying at Doheny overnight before going back to Malibu. I couldn't move, I couldn't do anything. I could sense people around me but I couldn't communicate, and it was like I was looking down on everything from above. I could see my husband crying and I could see my children crying, but I didn't feel emotion. I just felt calm and at peace. An ambulance came and they took me to Cedars and I would float in and out of consciousness. They had to rehydrate me, so they put me on a saline drip, and then my blood pressure plummeted. I was aware of the panic around me--"Take her to intensive care." "No, there's no time. We'll do it here."--and I was given three pints of blood. Ten days that have vanished from my memory.

  I always knew that I might lose my hair, but unlike the chemo you get with breast cancer, with colon cancer it isn't inevitable. But I'd wake up in the morning and I'd be covered in hair. I'd get up to clean my teeth and the basin would be full of it. I'd have something to eat and there would be hair in the fucking food, so I'd be picking hairs out of my mouth. I found the tightest hat I had, and kept that pulled on. Not for vanity, just to stop the bloody stuff covering everything in sight.

  Even Minnie's beautiful pale blond fluff was covered with it. She refused to leave my side and her body kept me warm. Although it was July and then August, I was always freezing cold. My bones would ache through the shaking.

  And then it happened again, and I was rushed back to the hospital. This time for eight days. And the first time I was strong enough to walk to the bathroom, I looked into the basin mirror when I was washing my hands, and I just sobbed and sobbed. That was the first time I cried. I never particularly liked my hair, but at least there had always been lots of it. Now the little there was was dead and lifeless.

  "It come back. Don' worry," Kay would tell me, on her way to the salon in the Beverly Hills Hotel. Every day I was in the hospital she came. Every day, for a couple of minutes, maybe five, just to say hello. I learned not to study my face.

  It was Kay who called Jude and suggested he drop in. And just his being there was like having a blood transfusion--he made me feel good, even though I didn't look it. Ostensibly he came to give me a bit of makeup, but what he really did was make me laugh. Jude Alcala is six foot four, handsome and Hispanic, and a true Angelino, the youngest child of fourteen. To Jude I am always "Sharone." We met on The Osbournes when he was working for MTV, since which time, whenever I have a function to go to in the States, or an interview or photo session, Jude will do my hair and makeup, and Ozzy's. And however stressed out you are, Jude's just being there is guaranteed to calm you down.

  When I came out of the hospital I had two wigs made, by the lady who makes Cher's. Well, why not? Meanwhile Minnie had become dehydrated too, maybe in sympathy. The vet had had her on a saline drip while I was in Cedars-Sinai.

  Finally they got the levels of chemo right. All the time I continued to work, doing whatever was necessary, including hosting the American Music Awards. I was still really sick, but I felt I had to keep up the morale of the family. It was then that I got the offer to do The Vagina Monologues in Chicago. Suddenly life was much shorter than I realized, and I wanted to take in as much of everything as I could. But Ozzy said no.

  On September 14 the first series of The Osbournes won an Emmy in the Outstanding Nonfiction Program (Reality) category, the first Emmy in MTV's twenty-year history. It also established an entirely new genre that would soon turn into an epidemic. Through The Osbournes people got to see Ozzy as he really is, not the deranged rock god who bit the head off a bat, but the normal, regular guy that everyone could relate to, like him or not. And that was all I had ever wanted. The show broke through people's misconceptions. I wanted people to see how funny and loving my husband was, and through The Osbournes they did.

  Seven of the MTV team got an award. Mine was as producer, because that was the one sure way I'd had of retaining creative control. At the beginning I would watch the edited tapes to see if there was anything we wanted taken out--just because sometimes you say things you don't really mean--but it was never to change the story line or make us look better. By the end, however, I got so bloody bored that I didn't bother. Ozzy has only ever watched two episodes in the whole thing. But it's there, part of the family legacy to hand down to future generations. Kelly and I accepted the awards on behalf of us all, and my speech was just one sentence: "I love you, Ozzy."

  It was when I was still having chemo that we decided to renew our wedding vows. I'd met this great rabbi, who'd written a book on marriages between different faiths, and I'd told
him how my own wedding day had been tainted and how I'd always wished we could do it over again. His name was Steven Reuben, and he said he would do it: why not? Rabbi Reuben was a lovely man, and whether he was a Catholic or a Muslim I would have felt just as good. It would be a New Year's Eve like we'd never had before.

  It was a wonderful occasion. Everybody who had meant something in our lives was there, and I felt so blessed that we had the money to do it, and we were able to have it at the Beverly Hills Hotel. In all, about three hundred people came, everyone from my doctors to the Newmans. And we had the Village People perform, and this time I had a dress that fit. But it took it out of me, and two days later, on January 2, 2003, I was taken into intensive care again. I'd overdosed on the antinausea medication I'd been given and had had a seizure. All the so-called nurses who were supposed to be looking after me could think to do was to throw water on me. An MTV security guard carried me downstairs and I arrived at Cedars-Sinai in the MTV van.

  Ozzy was cursing himself that he let me go through with the ceremony, but he knew how much I wanted it. Because I honestly didn't know if I would come through, and I wanted my children to see our marriage being blessed. I wanted our children to have that memory.

  Among the three hundred people who came on New Year's Eve were, naturally, our families: Ozzy's sisters and brothers were there, and Louis, his son by his first marriage, and Louis's fiancee Louise. There were also three guests no one within my circle would have expected: my father, Meredith and my brother David.

  I owe this change of heart to my husband. We had been in New York fifteen months earlier, in September 2001, just before The Osbournes had started shooting. As usual, we were staying at the Peninsula Hotel. I was in bed when Ozzy woke me up. He said the World Trade Center had been hit, and that we had to get out because it had to be a full-on attack. He had been doing a crossword and Tony had called from the next-door room to tell him to switch on the television. Kelly said, "Let's go to the roof," so we did. We looked south towards the Battery and there was nothing but this vast mushroom cloud that looked like an atomic bomb. And there was a man lying on top of the roof sunbathing, and he told us to get out of the way because we were blocking the sun.

  Somehow we got hold of the crew, and they brought the tour bus up to 55th Street. All we wanted was to go home, but planes were all grounded. It took another two days before the bridges off the island were open. Until then, Manhattan was a ghost town. There wasn't a soul in the streets, not even any birds, just newspapers blowing like a scene from a western. So we set off to drive across America to LA, the old route 66. We were afraid, and just wanted to get home. It was then, lying in bed, driving through the night as we had done so many times before, that Ozzy began to talk.

  "Listen, Sharon. We've all done stupid things, but there comes a point where you either carry on doing stupid things or you change. And I know in the bottom of my heart that if you have any feelings for your father, any feelings left at all, you have to make it up with him. Whoever decided to invent us got it wrong. We should have been born with all the common sense we have now. By the time you get old enough to realize how dumb you've been, you're too old. And as I get older I realize I've got to learn to forgive. I'm not suggesting we hold hands around the table and try to contact your mother. But when he's dead it's too late."

  My mother had died just before Christmas 1999. My brother called and told me she was dead, and I said, "Oh what a shame," and put the phone down.

  I never shed a tear, never had a twinge in my stomach, never dreamed about her, nothing. And there has never been a moment when I've thought: Oh God, if only I could see her again, if only we could have made up, if only I'd been able to hold her hand and say, "I love you, Mum." I couldn't because I didn't. If I ever thought about her, it was just as a sad bitter old woman with a cigarette in her mouth and a diamond on her finger worth over a million pounds. Emphysema got her in the end; she was still smoking till the day she died.

  I didn't even feel relief. I knew what was going to happen, that the remaining family members would descend like vultures trying to get hold of the antiques, paintings and her jewelry, and fighting each other for it.

  By September 11, 2001, I was already looking after my father financially. Shortly after my mother died, David had called again to tell me that Don was sick. He needed a pacemaker fitted. He was down on his luck and friendless. Almost everything had gone. I paid. A few months later I discovered he'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's several years before. Meredith and he had parted and were no longer living together. I decided I wanted to take care of him.

  When my mother died, my father had moved back to England, but as the house had been in her name--naturally--he now had nowhere to live. I put him in a furnished apartment on Park Lane. I asked him and Meredith to come to the palace for the Queen's Jubilee as my guests. They were still friends. But the old man hadn't changed. I discovered that even with Alzheimer's and a fucking pacemaker, he was also fucking the cleaner of the apartment block. She was married with two kids and a punch-happy husband. With the little money he had left, he bought this woman a brand-new car, clothes, and the rest of it, so I decided I had to get him away from there and bring him over to Hollywood, which I did. But then he persuaded me to bring her and her two kids over to LA to live with him. It didn't last long, but I put them up in the Beverly Hills Hotel, I took them to Vegas. Why? Because I wanted to make my father happy. And because I could.

  Somebody that New Year's Eve asked me when I had stopped hating him. And it's very weird, but I realized that I had never hated him. There were things about him I couldn't understand: I couldn't believe how mean he was, how callous, how he had used me--just as a human being, forget being his daughter--and how he put my life in danger, physically, financially, every which way, and seemed not to have a conscience about it. I was angry that he could do that to anybody, and I was angry with him for not being the upright, moral man I thought he was, for his having hoodwinked me. I was angry with him because he had lied to me his entire life. And he was responsible for so much unhappiness. I don't think I forgave him, but I blanked it out. I did what I always do, just carried on. As Ozzy said, "You're a long time dead." Now he was just a sick old man.

  "You need your own talk show, and I'm going to get it for you." This was Casey Paterson, the producer I worked with on the Queen's Jubilee. I thought she only said it to cheer me up, as I was then deep into the chemo. But she meant it, and--with herself as executive producer--she took me to Kingworld, which does Oprah, and then took me to Telepictures. Telepictures came up with more money, so we went with them. This soon proved an important lesson: it isn't necessarily about the money, because the first thing they did was turn on Casey and cut her out of the picture. I like to think that if I'd been thinking clearly, I would have stuck by my friend and never allowed this to happen. And there were plenty of signs, like they wouldn't deal with my agent. I should have said fuck off.

  Although I did get lots of experience, the show was basically crap. They changed the producer, the director and the show runner (the person who holds everything together) three times. It was a complete and utter shambles. Whenever I wanted to bring somebody in creatively, they'd say they had somebody already. I didn't realize they had a whole pack of staff on the permanent payroll and would plonk whoever it was onto me because they just wanted to give them a gig.

  It was a talk show, an hour every day, and it originated in Los Angeles at eleven in the morning, which meant it was two in the afternoon in New York and everything in between across the country, depending on the time zone. It was put out as though it was live, although each show was recorded the day before.

  There were guest celebrities and Oprah-style interviews. At one stage they wanted the more Jerry Springer-type confrontations, full of emotionally dysfunctional people screaming and shouting, and I wouldn't do it. I wanted to talk to people who were dealing with things that had happened that were beyond their control; I wanted to help people
. They wanted to have people fighting.

  The best thing about The Sharon Osbourne Show was the location, at KTLA, down on Sunset, a great old studio that had been there for years, and the set was a mock-up of Doheny which, of course, everybody knew from The Osbournes:the kitchen, the sitting room and a little library section, and I felt very comfortable there, and Minnie and Maggie would always come with me and would regularly attack the guests.

  One of my first guests was Little Richard, one of the biggest American artists my father brought over to Europe in the early sixties. He was such a great character, and I still had strong memories of him from my childhood. My father was the one who got him to stop singing gospel and go back to singing the devil's music: rock and roll. In forty years, it seemed to me that nothing had changed about him, still with his beautiful skin and his outrageous clothes. When he first came over to London he'd had Billy Preston with him, who could only have been about fifteen, and who was on keyboards that famous time the Beatles played on the roof of the Apple headquarters in Savile Row.

  I had some old friends on, like Elton and Rod Stewart, and over the year I got to meet people like Quentin Tarantino, singers like Josh Groban, Dido, Donna Summer, Sheryl Crow. But the people I was most interested in were the noncelebrities. There was a family of eight kids who had lost their mum and dad within eight months, and because they were on my show a makeover show saw them and gave them a whole house. I went to a women's prison for lifers in LA. This was one of the only ideas of mine they took up. I wanted to highlight the fact that women who murder get longer sentences than men, because women "aren't supposed" to be violent, and when they are, then the law comes crashing down on them, even though most of the time they killed in self-defense.