Sharon Osbourne - Unbreakable: My New Autobiography

COPYRIGHT

Published by Sphere

978-0-7481-1531-0

Copyright Sharon Osbourne 2013

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

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S PHERE

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Unbreakable

Table of Contents

The title of this book is Unbreakable and Ozzy, you and I are.

P earl: a precious jewel whose luminous sheen lights up everything around it. Natures way of dealing with an imperfection a piece of grit in an oyster.

Its said that pearls benefit from being worn as regularly as possible, their lustre improving as they take on the warmth of the skin. Ive had pearl earrings and necklaces by the dozen in my time presents from my father, from my husband, some Ive bought myself but the most precious arrived courtesy of my son. The most valuable pearls, it seems, occur spontaneously in the wild: there is nothing planned or premeditated about them. And the Pearl that came into our lives in April 2012 did exactly that, and she was more precious than anything that emerged from the sea. At first sight of her incandescent beauty my heart soared. All the pain, deception and betrayals of the past few years seemed to evaporate in a single glance from those tiny eyes, those quizzical eyebrows.

Over the last sixty years I have fulfilled various family roles daughter, sister, wife, mother all of which, to a greater or lesser extent, Ive managed to fuck up. But this is different. The role of grandmother is one that involves no stress, no compromise and no rehearsal. Loving this little scrap of humanity is as natural to me as breathing. I dont think about it, but I cant live without it. At a time in my life when I felt I no longer knew what I was here for, what my role was, this precious Pearl gave me new hope.

While Jackie Boy and his wife Lisa are talking with Ozzy, I sneak into their daughters bedroom the one Ive made for her in our new house in LA and stand there mesmerised, gazing down at her tiny body encased in a baby grow, one small hand flung out towards a bar of the cot, miniature fingers curled around it. She stirs slightly, her eyelids flutter and I hold my breath, anxious not to wake her by my presence. But she simply lets out a contented sigh and drifts back to sleep.

Leaning over the cot to kiss her goodnight, my head spins, my senses overwhelmed at the perfection of her tiny ears, as intricate as shells, at each tiny nail, the curve of her neck, and above all, her soft, downy head, cheeks flushed from her goodnight bottle, and that indefinable baby smell of talcum powder that takes me back to my own days as a new mother.

I sit down quietly in the adjacent armchair and glance around the room. It was the first one I had decorated in the new house and it is predominantly pink what else? No crucifixes and no rubber bats in here Instead, theres a fresco of butterflies painted on the wall above the cot, and framed photographs of dancing ladies in flamboyant gowns. This room, and this little girl dreaming quietly in her cot, represent innocence to me, a brand-new start for all of us.

Its the strangest feeling, becoming a grandmother. You love them as if theyre your own but now you have the time to play with them, just to have fun. And you have the wisdom of experience all those hard lessons you learn over the years as a mother.

Pearls arrival in our lives has reminded me of all the good times I shared with Aimee, Jack and Kelly. There was a lot of fun a lot of laughter. But Ive also found myself reflecting more upon my mistakes as well. Looking back, its hardly surprising that motherhood didnt come easily to me. My role models were not only negative, they were positively destructive. A mother who couldnt be arsed to get out of bed to give us breakfast; a father who lied and cheated all his life and for whom I was a useful fall guy whose word had no more substance to it than a drug addicts promise. Only Sally, my paternal grandmother, could have shown what it meant to be a good parent, but she died before any of the children were born. And then there was Rachel, our housekeeper in LA during the years I got to know Ozzy, a truly wonderful woman who for as long as I was lucky enough to know her acted as a surrogate mother to me. And then she was killed in a stupid accident, as unnecessary as it was tragic, a plane crash that also killed Ozzys best friend and business partner, Randy Rhoads. After that, I buried myself in my work in Ozzys career just keeping the show on the road and, once Aimee, Kelly and Jack came along, keeping the Osbourne family in funds.

As a mother, I failed. This isnt a statement soliciting a pantomime response, Oh no you didnt! I did. The kids said it themselves the first time we all went to a family session when Ozzy was in rehab for the nth time. Our father was a drunk and our mother wasnt there for us. When I look at cine films and later video footage of Aimee, Kelly and Jack when they were young, they bring me a lot of happiness, but they also make me sad because I want to turn back the clock. I want them the way they were then so I can do it all again, now that weve all learnt by our mistakes. Things we should have done, things we could have done, but didnt.

Somewhere within that perfect little person are traces of all of us, the good and the bad. I hope at least that Pearl will inherit the long legs and the beauty of her mother. That shell inherit Jacks happy nature and intelligence. From Lisas family I hope she has the security of a close-knit community they all live within a few short miles of each other in Louisiana, and Lisas parents, and her three sisters, are all happily married. From my fathers family, the capacity for survival that brought my grandparents from the ghettos of Eastern Europe. And from my mothers side, the musicality of generations of dancers and entertainers.

And from me? Thats a hard one. Not my legs, not my body, for sure. Perhaps my refusal to give up. My unbreakability. But not, I hope, the tendency to take everyone elses problems on my shoulders. To work myself into the ground for all the wrong reasons.

Im sixty now, and the last decade of my life has been more like the manic schedule of an athletic twenty-three-year-old than a fiftysomething who has survived cancer and years of struggle. It began with The Osbournes TV show. Id always been happy working as Ozzys manager, hiding in the background. Now I was thrust into the limelight. And after a failed talk show in the US, Simon Cowell offered me a judging role on The X Factor . Suddenly and quite unexpectedly I had begun a career in television. I was proud of that I liked the fact that this was my work. And for the first time in my career I was actually doing something for me, something that I loved doing. Remember I was a failed drama school kid who was never good enough to get work as an actress or dancer. Finally, my time as the main talent (whatever the fuck that means) had come, later in life.

The trouble was, I could never reach the point where I could sit back and say, Enough. Youve proved you can do it, now sit back. Relax. Just enjoy life. I just couldnt stop jumping on and off planes, taking on more and more work and weeping with exhaustion as I made late-night calls to my family on the other side of the world.

I convinced myself that my kids were all grown up and independent that they didnt really need me any more. So however much they begged me to stop not for their benefit, but for my own health I carried on with the same crazy schedule, burning myself out in the process. There was always a small voice whispering in the back of my mind that if I just worked a bit harder, carried on for a little bit longer, I would somehow be a better person. That people would value me and love me more. That I would respect myself more. And so it went on, year after year.