Sharon Osbourne

Sharon Osbourne is on her ninth life. It’s the only way to explain her survivor’s luck, and a life that contains more living than can feasibly be packed into the usual single span.

It’s included a father who bullied, slandered and cheated her but taught her everything she knows; a 25-year marriage to a man she adores that has featured domestic violence, alcoholism and drug problems, infidelity and attempted murder; a career as a famously ruthless manager and mogul; a midlife reinvention as a star in her own right; and personal demons of low self-esteem, and a 20-year eating disorder. No one would deny her the respect she deserves for emerging triumphant after decades of drama, disaster, loss and infamy.

Sitting in her huge and beautiful house (part country-house chic, part Rock God mansion, complete with chintz sofas and Black Sabbath crosses on the door handles), waiting for her to finish having her hair and make-up done, I have time to realise how comprehensively Sharon Osbourne is having the last laugh. Growing up as the ‘plain, fat, dumpy’ daughter of legendary music manager Don Arden didn’t get her off to a promising start. She worked for her father, and he used his position to cheat her out of millions of dollars (‘he used to get me to sign papers for him in my name. I didn’t even know what I was signing, only that years later I ended up paying his debts’), and was so angry when she took over managing Ozzy, who’d been one of Don’s acts, that he told everyone she was mad.

Her relationship with Ozzy, always intense, is ‘better than it’s ever been’. Her husband has finally beaten the alcohol and drug abuse that drove him to extremes of violence and abuse, ‘though in the early years I was just as bad. I’d match him drink for drink, and we’d beat the shit out of each other’, and now they’re so sweet and loved-up that they embarrass their kids. Her parents are dead, but she says, ‘I’ve made my peace with my past. It’s finally gone.’ Since she shot to fame on The Osbournes, she’s enjoyed ‘every minute’ of the spotlight that has shined directly on her, after a lifetime of supporting her husband behind the scenes.

Her legendary toughness hasn’t completely gone – the woman who sent rivals excrement packaged in Tiffany boxes is still capable of throwing drinks and bad mouthing anyone who crosses her or – God help them – says a bad word about Ozzy or her children, but she’s happier and more mellow than she’s ever been – and in the mood to talk.

Interview

You called your autobiography Extreme, which seems like a very good title for your life. But it could also be called ‘the plain girl’s revenge’. You describe yourself as having no looks or talent, and yet you’ve achieved everything you’ve ever wanted.

My achievements are down to my looks, or lack of them. I was fat, short, hairy. I’m not putting myself down – that’s the truth. I didn’t have any talent, either, and I left school with barely a single qualification. If I’d been pretty, my life would probably have been very different.

How do you think it would have been different?

In the music business, especially back then in the Seventies, girls were beautiful. You were a performer, or you could be a girlfriend or a groupie, but you still had to look good. I didn’t have the face or the body that opens doors and those girls that did… well, they got a shock when they hit 40 because they thought it would last, they relied on looks alone, and the looks go. I had to develop a brain and a personality, and be fun and smart and learn to get on with people and make deals. Not being beautiful was an education.

So why choose the music business? Didn’t you consider getting away from your father, and choosing a life where your looks wouldn’t have been so important?

I grew up in the music business, it was all I’d ever known. My father, Don, made and lost fortunes – he was broke a lot of the time, but in between there would be the limos and the big houses. He opened the door to that world and showed me the view, and I liked it. I wanted all that. No rock star or mogul was going to say ‘let’s invite Sharon on to the yacht in Barbados’ because I would just be a big fat blob in a swim suit.

And that’s why you went into the business side of the industry?

That’s exactly why – and it was a mean, tough business run by men.