I told him what had happened to him, that he'd had an accident, but he was going to be OK and that I loved him. There was a pause of a few seconds, perhaps fifteen, then, for the first time, he spoke coherently.
"You can go now," he said.
"What do you mean, Dadda?"
"You can go home to your family."
"Our family, you mean."
He shook his head and turned his face away.
Over the next few days it became clear that he had been dreaming while he was unconscious, and it basically had been one long complex dream. Later he remembered it in incredible detail, and for months was convinced it was true.
As far as he believed, I had left him and gone off with a very wealthy man who owned a plane with a swimming pool in it, that he lived surrounded by guards with machine guns, and I was flying around the world with this wealthy man.
"But there is no wealthy man," I insisted. "You're the wealthy man." But nothing I could say would convince him. The children tried, but it was no better; he just thought they were covering up. And it was so, so sad, to see him like this. The physical pain was now equaled by this terrible idea that we had abandoned him and were lying to him because we felt sorry for him. Nothing any of us said would get through. He thought he was in Ireland, which must have been related to Louis's wedding.
On the twelfth day I decided to take everyone up to London. It was December 20, and we had done nothing as far as Christmas was concerned. Everything I had planned would be the same, only it wouldn't be at Welders but in a private room where Ozzy would be moved in a few days' time. It was attached to the main trauma unit, but was all glass so he could be monitored by the nurses, but he had a TV and his own lavatory and it was private. We had Bobby's family coming, and Robert as well as the Newmans as usual, but I wanted it to be Christmassy and fun, even though this would be the most difficult Christmas any of us had ever had to face.
"So I'm taking the Thomsons and the kids," I told him, "and we're going into town. I'll take everybody out this evening, then we'll stay in a hotel overnight but I'll be back to see you in the morning."
He wasn't at all happy that we were going, but the children desperately needed a break and Ozzy was still spending most of the time sleeping anyway. And when he was awake, there was physiotherapy he was supposed to be doing to keep himself flexible.
When I got back home the following morning there was a call from the hospital: I had better get there quick because he was about to check out. Check out? The medical team had told me he had to stay in till March at least.
When I got to his room, he was in tears. "You've got to get me out of here, Sharon," he said, and looked so pathetic sitting there in this horrible metal collar, but I told him that he was in no fit state to leave.
"Look, Ozzy, they're moving you to a great room. Somewhere I can stay overnight, and we're fixing up the room now, and we've arranged Christmas lunch, and it's going to be just great."
"I want to get out. I want to get out."
"Ozzy, this is insane behavior."
"Get me the papers. I'm signing myself out."
The hospital staff, me--all of us were at our wits' end. But Ozzy knows how these places work, and he knew that he had the right to sign himself out, and not me or anybody else had the power to stop him. What made it worse was that this behavior was clearly manic. I tried to buy myself some time.
"At least give me a day to get a hospital bed in, and some nurses," I said. Because how could I lift him, or take him to the bathroom, or get him into the shower? In the hospital they'd been using a hoist and a bedpan. And he had to have physio every day. And he had such a massive amount of medication to take--I didn't want to be responsible for that. So I just begged and pleaded with him.
"Please let me at least get a nurse. Let me get the house ready. I mean, how am I going to get you upstairs? Please, Ozzy . . ."
He wouldn't have it. The kids were crying. Everyone knew that this was insane behavior.
"You cannot come home, Ozzy. We cannot cope."
"Get me the papers."
I got on the phone. I could get a hospital bed the following day, and nurses, but not today.
His only concession was to bring a walker back with him. Of course the whole journey was agony--it might have been only twenty minutes, but every bump made him wince with the pain--and then it took another twenty minutes to get him from the car into the bloody house. His bad arm was strapped to his chest, he had this horrific collar on and he couldn't sit normally because of his lungs. Everything was sore, everything was in agony, and there he was at home sitting on a sofa.
That night was the worst ever. Just getting him upstairs was a fucking nightmare. In the end it took four of them: Jack, Bobby's eldest son Kevin, Robert and David, who lives in the coach house. Then there was Maryshe, and David's wife, Sharon, standing behind him, just in case . . . I had to turn away. I was just, I can't watch this, I cannot fucking deal with this. Not only because I was worried that he was still acting so strange with me, but because it was Christmas and I wanted to make everything right for everyone. There were so many vulnerable people: the Thomson family who had just lost Bobby, Robert who had just lost his mum, not to mention Aimee, Kelly and Jack.
We tried three different beds in the house. He finally settled in the spare room, which has a Napoleonic bed with one side against the wall, and that night he insisted that I lie with him there, even though it was not much bigger than a big single. So I was lying against the wall, and he was on the edge, while Kelly was lying on the floor in case he rolled out. Every time Ozzy wanted to go to the bathroom, Kelly took him. "Can't you just piss in a fucking cup or something?" I said. But no. I had to watch my nineteen-year-old daughter stagger across the room with her father hanging off her back. Then, when they got to the toilet, she would just hold him and look the other way. And I was like, What the fuck are we doing here?
"You are seriously sick, and you should be in the hospital. Listen to me, Ozzy. I'm putting my hands up in the air and I'm saying, I am not responsible. I do not want to be a party to this. I cannot cope, I cannot fucking cope. Don't be so fucking selfish." I was worn out.
The next day the hospital bed arrived and the nurses started. He was still pretty difficult, and still talking about Ireland and the wedding and some earthquake. And I was like, "No, Ozzy, we didn't go to Ireland, Louis's wedding isn't until January. There was no earthquake, it never happened." It was a big strain on everyone.
Christmas was not one of the best, but then it's an uphill battle with Ozzy anyway, and as soon as it was over the kids went back to LA, and I didn't blame them. "Don't you worry," I said. "Just go."
At the last minute I decided we needed something to cheer us up and so got in a caterer for a New Year's Eve party. There were only about thirty of us, a few of our good friends, the Newmans, my niece Gina and her husband, Dean, and their babies, Lynn, and my old flame Adrian, and I'm so glad I did. We had the best time. The mixture of people was perfect. Everyone knew each other, and no one person had to stay with Ozzy for too long, because everyone was trying to make him feel loved but he was being difficult, insisting on walking around with a stick and looking hideous, and we all had to suffer because you could see he was in agony.
I heard, "For God's sake, Ozzy, sit down!" over and over again, but he took no notice. My husband can't sit still for two seconds at the best of times, and so being disabled like this was messing with his head. Even so, I think even Ozzy enjoyed it in the end, in his way. He certainly stayed up to see in the New Year. We stood at the window together, looking at the fireworks, and I held his hand and reminded him of where we had been just one year ago, telling ourselves and the world just how much we meant to each other. But he wasn't fully with it, and I kept wondering, when is he going to get clarity? When is he going to find the reality and realize that this is what's real, not the fantasy of the flying swimming pool? I don't know what time Ozzy went to bed that night, because by then I was l
egless. The catering company had made up a fruit punch and I had my head in the bowl it tasted so good, and for the first time in years and years and years I got very drunk. Finally a release. It was like, God, do I need this . . .
Telepictures was not happy that I had been away for longer than the agreed two-week Christmas break.
"Look," I said. "The show has hardly any more time to run, so let's just call it a day right now." But no. They insisted I go back to LA to finish the fucking show, but it was a nightmare: Ozzy refused to stay in England without me but, because of his injury, no airline would take him for six weeks. In the end we had to charter a plane, and when I did get back to work, the first thing they told me was that they were not renewing my contract. I wasn't surprised. Of course, they knew that before I left.
One of my last guests was Simon Cowell. Simon is huge in America through his show American Idol, and the producers thought it might be fun to see the sparks fly between us, as he had been insulting us, saying that Ozzy's accident was fabricated so we could get a No. 1 single, saying that Kelly was fat and couldn't sing, saying that The Osbournes was yesterday's news and that we were all crazy. Anything that's happening and popular, he always takes the opposite line. But that's Simon. It's his thing. I had never met him before. I can't say I warmed to him, but he was very open, admitted he was wrong and apologized. So there was nothing more I wanted from him.
I was late for the very last show. In fact, I had given up on the whole thing weeks before. It was like I was treading water, but I had to finish the commitment. I was just riding the contract out.
When they realized I wasn't in my dressing room, they started to fret.
"I'm sorry," Melinda said when she answered the phone, "but Sharon can't possibly make it today, she's in a closed-door meeting with Simon Cowell." Then she switched on the hold button. "They're saying the audience is in, and smoke's coming out of their arses."
"Tell them I want two hundred thousand dollars," I told her, running some more hot water into the bath. "Tell them I want gimlets served to me out of Manolo Blahnik shoes." They didn't get the joke. I went in. My last line to the camera was, "I hope you've enjoyed the journey as much as we have."
It ran a year but I worked out that with all the travel and promotion it was eighteen months of my life. Casey Paterson, the lovely, talented lady Telepictures said could never be the show runner because she didn't have the experience, now runs her own network. But I'm not blaming anyone; I had the forum and the show didn't work. They gave me a huge opportunity and I learned a lot.
By the time the credits for the final Sharon Osbourne Show had run, I couldn't have cared less that it wasn't being renewed. Melinda's line about me being in a meeting with Simon Cowell was not so far removed from the truth. Shortly after our TV nonconfrontation, his production company asked if I'd be interested in doing a talent show called The X-Factor in the UK. I had seen a couple of episodes of Pop Idol in England, and I had seen American Idol in the States, and on a professional level I had a lot of respect for Simon, but the money was very low.
"One time," I said to him. "I'll prove myself, but I will never work for this kind of money again."
My life has always been extreme, even from birth. One parent Jewish, one Catholic. My weight: skinny to obese and back again. My life with my husband: a constant ricochet from joy to heartache. And then there was my life with my father, where it was either love or hate, feast or famine. Until now, I had rolled with the punches, but by the time Simon came to me with the X-Factor offer, I no longer had that option.
For twenty years I had lived in fear of the knock on the door, and on October 17, 2003, it had come.
Dana called to say that a letter had arrived from the California Franchise Tax Board, and she didn't understand it, she said. She is very meticulous and always knows where we are down to the last cent.
"What's to understand, Dana? Tax is tax."
"But this is like a bill."
"So?"
"Sharon, this is a bill for two million, four hundred and sixty-nine thousand, two hundred and twenty-one dollars and four cents, and I don't understand."
"Two and a half million dollars? There must be some mistake, Dana. Just give them a call and sort it out."
It wasn't a mistake. When it comes to tax there is no statute of limitations. If it had been my father's name on the bottom, they would just have to sing for it because he was penniless, an old man in a retirement home paid for by his daughter. But the signature at the bottom was not his; it was mine. And I remember that day so clearly. Batyu Patel, a faceless shadow in the doorway of my bungalow at the Howard Hughes house, a dark silhouette against the bright July sunlight pouring in from the courtyard; only the papers that he was waving in his hand showing up white.
"How can you not do this one last thing for your father?" he had said, having no idea what would happen years later.
And I had been so busy wrapping my final few ornaments in tissue paper, putting them in packing cases the movers had brought, ornaments I never saw again, and I just wanted him to go. I just wanted him and everything to do with my father out of my life. Yet even as I signed, I had this feeling it would come back to haunt me. And now, twenty years later, it had. But I could never, ever have imagined it could be this much.
We hired lawyers to fight it. Spent even more thousands exploring this loophole and that loophole. But not one cent was deducted.
Fame comes at a price: if I had stayed quietly managing Ozzy, they might never have found me. But with The Osbournes, and then with my show, everything about me was out there. Sharon Osbourne was Don Arden's daughter. And in some office somewhere in downtown Los Angeles, they only had to put "Sharon Arden" into Google to find out who I was now. Where I was now. There is no other explanation as to how they finally ran me to ground.
I didn't have the money. Nothing like the money. The money from The Osbournes had been split four ways and I gave my share to Aimee. To get these people off my back, Ozzy lent it to me. And now I have to pay it off. Ozzy would give me anything; he's not asking for anything back. But I just feel so guilty: my father again, coming to take Ozzy's money, and this time I am not going to let it happen. But to pay two and a half million, you have to earn three and a half million.
"If all goes well," Simon Cowell had said, "then there'll be a second series." Now, for the first time since that phone call from Dana, there seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel. Not just one series, but two. But I needed big money.
April 21, 2005, 5:30 p.m.
Doheny Road: my bedroom
"Sharon, call for you on line one."
"Thanks, Howard." I pick up the phone.
"You know what, Sharon? You are the most difficult person to get hold of."
"Marsha!"
"We just wanted to say that Peter and I are thinking of Ozzy today. So do please give him our best love."
I met Marsha in 1980, when there were very few women in the industry, but she is one of the greats, a very successful agent in New York, who was handling AC/DC, Def Leppard, Metallica, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, and we hit it off immediately. Not only did we have the music industry in common, but our children are the same age, and our husbands share the same sense of humor. Though as Peter is Croatian with an impenetrable accent, when Ozzy and he tell each other jokes, we swear that Ozzy can't understand him, and he can't understand Ozzy. Whenever we are all together, we always end up talking about sex. Because Ozzy and I have such an active sex life, Peter is always complaining that Marsha only wants to have sex on a Saturday morning before her run in the park, saying, "You've got twenty minutes, Peter, so make the best of it."
Throughout the years I've known her, Marsha and Peter have always been there for us. They flew over to England from New York to see Ozzy in the hospital.
"Hey, I just read a thing on the Internet about your Dr. Kipper, and was wondering how that was all going."
Dr. David Kipper is a doctor who was recommended
to us by a friend; as always it was about some groundbreaking way of getting Ozzy detoxed. He came into our lives three months before I was diagnosed as having cancer and he was very personable and had a great bedside manner with a creamy-sounding voice, and you felt so safe and reassured and calmed by him. He was very LA: he had the suntan, the open-neck silk shirt, the Armani trousers, the Gucci loafers. I should have heard the warning bells when he started name-dropping--everybody from movie directors to actors to rock stars. To listen to him you'd think he had personally saved half of Hollywood's rich and famous.
To cut a long story short, he put Ozzy on a drug--illegal at the time in California for detox--that was itself an opiate, which Ozzy became addicted to.
Soon it wasn't just Ozzy's detox he was dealing with. It was Ozzy's shaking, Ozzy's phobias, Ozzy's everything. He even put Ozzy on medication for his dyslexia. Then, once I was diagnosed with cancer, the prescriptions really started rolling out, both for me and for Ozzy, who basically had a breakdown. By that time he was taking forty-two pills and/or shots a day.
It's hard now to understand how we let ourselves be hoodwinked by this man. But we did. Perhaps because he was only ever a phone call away. In America doctors don't do house calls. He did. Kelly had only to fall over and hurt her leg and he would be there. We bought into this man wholesale, as a whole family. Like a drowning man, we were grasping at anything that seemed to offer a way out. In all, with Ozzy's various treatments, my treatments, the twenty-four-hour nursing care he insisted I needed post my op, nurses that turned out to be useless, we paid that man $750,000 over the one year he was with us.
The LA Times won a Pulitzer prize with an investigation into his activities. He has denied all charges, and now it's just down to the slow-moving medical malpractice people. As far as we are concerned, Ozzy and I have decided to just let it go. There are plenty of others out there suing him, but we just don't have the energy to get involved. But I think of Dr. Kipper, and probably will for the rest of my life, each time I look at a fucking fish.
Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography Page 32
