Unbreakable: My New Autobiography (11 page)

But the damage was already done. By the time we came off air, the ‘indignant viewer’ emails had started pouring in. Some of them were absolutely furious. It had been such a knee-jerk comment, I didn’t really think anyone would take it that seriously. Little did I know quite
how
serious it was yet to get.

A couple of days later, a message came in from some men’s group saying that I needed a bullet to the back of my head, and suddenly the production team were having crisis meetings. CBS were fantastically supportive and put on extra-tight security for the following two weeks. The threats didn’t keep me awake at night, but I’d be lying if I said they didn’t unnerve me a little, because there’s always one nutter, isn’t there? It only takes one.

I had been planning to address the issue again on air, but after all the backlash, and receiving a death threat, I said diddly-squat about it. It was like,
what
penis remark?

That’s what I find so hard about all this new technology now. There is always someone, somewhere who takes offence, and all they have to do is write a quick email and push the ‘send’ button. In the old days, when you had to write out a letter of complaint by hand, stick it in an envelope and wander off to the postbox, you
really
had to care about the point you wanted to make.

After the Catherine Kieu incident, I half expected to be given a talking-to by someone from the network or production team, but it didn’t come. They were really good about it. They’re the number-one network in America and have been for sixteen years. It’s a huge corporation, yet it’s like a family. They care about people.

But I’m a realist. I’m employed to do a job, so if it’s not right for their network and I am going to get them in trouble by expressing a certain viewpoint, then of course they’ll say something. They tell me all the time, ‘OK, you’ve taken it too far, don’t do that, it’s not right for our viewers.’ They know better than me, and I damn well listen. I’d be stupid not to. Again, it’s that fine line between not being too outrageous, but not ending up with five co-hosts all sitting there too terrified to open their mouths in case it upsets one woman in Baltimore.

Last summer, we had a woman called Rielle Hunter on as a guest. She had written a ‘spiritual’ book about her affair with married Republican senator John Edwards, whose wife Elizabeth had had breast cancer and has since died. She had been unkind about Elizabeth in the book, which I thought was beyond inappropriate. It was disgusting. To my mind, she pursued him and was no better than a political groupie. She waited for him outside a hotel then gave her phone number to his assistant, for God’s sake. Very unlikeable behaviour. So there she was, telling her story, and I just thought she wasn’t being honest, and said so.

‘Do you talk with forked tongue? That’s what I want to know, Rielle.’

She started to cry, but honestly – what did she expect? If you’re going to come on a show with five other women and tell us about your affair with the husband of a woman with four kids who is dying of cancer, well, sorry, missy, you’re going to get some stick. There was no way I was going to sit there and be false. If you’re going to write a book about having an affair, own it. Say that you know it’s not right and that he probably fed you a load of old lies about his wife, as they always do. But don’t sit there and try to justify it.

After the show, the feedback revealed that most of the viewers agreed with me, and the show’s bosses were obviously OK with it too, because I didn’t get told off!

But it’s a paradox; what I love about the show – that we are all mates and comfortable with each other – can also be my undoing, because I sometimes forget that there are people at home listening to our every word.

For me,
The Talk
has been like finding a home. I feel I belong. And I feel accepted. It’s grounded me. Of course I still get great satisfaction out of working in the music industry, but only so far as the projects involve my husband. For everything else, I’ve seen it all before a million times. I’ve worked with some of the most legendary artists in the business. But if it wasn’t for Ozzy, I could quite happily close the door and wave it all goodbye.

After all my TV endeavours, I have finally found somewhere I feel truly comfortable. Julie Chen is a self-made woman who has learnt her craft of journalism the hard way. I’ve watched her blossom into the hilariously funny, sexy presenter that she is today. She’s the glue that holds the show together, the quintessential professional. Off camera she’s as funny as fuck, and I trust her implicitly.

As for Sara Gilbert, my darling little lesbian who first had the courage to hire me, she reminds me of a baby bird in a nest and I always want to protect her. She’s wickedly funny and has a very naughty, dirty sense of humour and amazing comic timing. She became a star at a very early age, but through it all she has managed to stay grounded and is probably one of the wisest women I have ever known. I admire her immensely, as she came out openly on the show, which can’t have been easy. She has two beautiful young children and she talks honestly about her sexual orientation, and in doing so I know that she’s helped thousands of young people feel comfortable with who they are. Also, for a working actress to come out in such a public way is taking a huge risk because it could easily affect a career. There are some pretty small-minded people out there, even in showbiz.

The first time I was introduced to Sheryl Underwood, Julie Chen called and asked me to join her and Sheryl for a breakfast meeting at the Beverly Hills Hotel Polo Lounge. This was after Holly and Leah’s options hadn’t been renewed and she had told me that CBS were thinking of adding Sheryl to the show. Sheryl is a stand-up comic, but back then I had no idea who she was, any more than she knew who I was.

The morning of the meeting, I woke up not feeling my usual self. I had a headache and felt extremely hot. As usual, I arrived at the meeting ten minutes late. We were seated in a booth and I was in the middle, with Sheryl on my left and Julie on my right. We ordered breakfast and proceeded to discuss the show. Julie knew Sheryl of old and was well versed in her history, so she introduced us, ate and ran. We must have been at least forty-five minutes into our meeting when I felt something was wrong. I had a sweaty top lip, my armpits were tingling and my stomach was definitely not right. I realised that I was missing half of what Sheryl was saying.

Sitting at the table opposite were Nicole Ritchie, her husband and her two lovely children. I’ve known Nicole for the last twelve years, so we’d already acknowledged each other and thrown air kisses in the way you do. I had just made eye contact with Nicole’s husband when my mouth opened and I projectile-vomited. Fortunately the cascade of sick didn’t reach him, but it did reach Sheryl, exploding over the both of us and our breakfasts. As introductions go, it could have been better.

Hastily excusing myself, I ran to my Range Rover and headed straight to my apartment, which was five minutes’ drive from the hotel. But before I got there I shat myself all over the ivory-coloured leather seats. There are never fewer than three doormen to greet you at my apartment block and there’s also a concierge behind the reception desk. My dilemma was this: how the fuck do I get into the building? I was covered in puke and shit, and the smell in the car was making me want to throw up again. So I called up to my housekeeper, Saba, who brought down bin bags, wet towels and a dressing gown. In the meantime, I parked in a side street until she arrived to clean me up.

So it wasn’t the
greatest
introduction of all time… But Sheryl happens to be one of the funniest women I have ever met in my life and she took it all in her stride. I absolutely adore her, and subsequently I considered her my new bestie. She’s always got my back.

The other new lady on
The Talk
was Aisha Tyler. She is a multitalented actress/stand-up comedienne/writer, and I’ve known her for eleven years. I interviewed her at least three times on my chat show in 2003. She’s got that lethal combination of beauty and wit and is a complete workaholic – her résumé is endless. I’m in awe of her.

When Kelly came on
The Talk
as a guest, she made a point of thanking my four co-hosts on air for being so supportive. ‘My mum doesn’t have many female friends,’ she said. ‘So it’s nice that she now has you guys in her life. She loves you all very much.’

She’s right on both counts. It’s true that I don’t have a massive group of friends of either sex. But those I do have are very close indeed. And as I have always told my kids, it’s not the number of friends you have, it’s the quality. At the darkest times of my life, they have always been there for me. I can count them on both hands and, without exception, we have all grown up together.

My best friend is Gloria Butler, who is married to Geezer, Black Sabbath’s bassist. She’s about the only person in the world who still calls him Terry, apart from me when I’m talking to her. We first met when they were just dating and we’ve been friends ever since, even through the various ups and downs of Sabbath. She’s four years younger than me and lives around the corner from us in Beverly Hills. We speak every single day without fail, and if she’s walking her dogs past the house, she’ll always pop in. She’s very funny, and so like me in that she manages her husband and is very protective of him. She’s American, from St Louis, Missouri and Geezer is from Birmingham, so there’s quite a cultural difference, but it works.

I ring her on my way to work at about 7.15 a.m. and we talk for the duration of the drive to the studio, which is about fifteen minutes. She has two boys: the eldest is married with kids, just like Jack, and the other is Kelly’s age. Incredibly, we had them three weeks apart, so the kids pretty much grew up together. We have so much shared history it makes friendship a lot easier because we don’t have to go over old ground every time we speak. You can just have one of those quick, ‘Hi, how are you’ chats rather than spending the first ten minutes bringing someone up to date on your entire life.

Another really close friend is Belle Zwerdling, who I met in 1976 when I moved to Los Angeles at the tender age of twenty-four. She was my first American friend and we’ve stayed close ever since. Belle is now a very well respected Hollywood agent and a big part of who I am.

Before Ozzy and I started our romance, and it was just a working relationship, I even hooked him up with Belle. He was very lonely and needed female company, if you know what I mean, and Belle was well up for it. Both of them claim they never ‘did the deed’ as they were too busy telling jokes and laughing. According to Ozzy, Belle ‘would sit on top of my bed with her legs crossed and she spent the entire time eating pickles’. After their first date – if that’s what you could call it – Belle left Ozzy’s hotel room wearing his jacket – a nice green and white check – and in the inner pocket was Ozzy’s return ticket to London together with his passport. It was only a couple of months later when he needed it that Ozzy told me where it was. So I called her.

‘Listen, Belle. Ozzy needs his ticket and passport and they’re in that jacket you took. I need them back.’ Her response was short and to the point: ‘Ticket and passport yes, jacket no.’

Then there’s Michele Anthony, who I’ve known for thirty years. Our lives run strangely parallel in that her father, Dee Anthony, was the US equivalent of my father. The difference is that she chose education and I didn’t. She’s a lawyer and was at Sony Music for eighteen and a half years and ended up running the company. After leaving Sony – which was Ozzy’s label – she set up her own marketing consultancy and now has the luxury of working only with artists who are friends of hers. When I was working on the recent Black Sabbath album, Michele was the first person I turned to. We would never have got a number-one album without her. One of the gifts of getting to our age is that I trust her, and she trusts me, with everything. And we’re talking here about multimillion-dollar deals, other people’s careers. She’s so wise that she’s the person I go to for advice every time I need it. She lives in New York, so whenever I’m there we do our best to meet up. We can go for weeks without talking to each other, but we never have to explain why we haven’t been in touch. We simply pick up where we left off. That’s true friendship.

And along with my three girlfriends there’s Colin Newman. Colin and I met when I was about eighteen and he was twenty-three and he worked for my father’s accountant as a bookkeeper. Subsequently he passed his accountancy exams with honours and ended up buying the business. He and I became instant friends, although I used to drive him nuts whenever I went into the office. I’d fuck around with all his paperwork, scribble on everything I could see, go through his clients’ accounts when he wasn’t looking and basically cause uproar and mayhem. When I moved to Los Angeles in 1976, he would regularly come over on business trips for my father so we were always in touch. In fact, one time I even tried to fix him up with Belle too… ! I guess my matchmaking skills aren’t up to much. Anyway, nothing came of it, as he married his then receptionist, the lovely Danish beauty Mette. As a result, our three lives have been constantly intertwined since our early twenties. It was a total coincidence that Colin handled Black Sabbath in those early days, and Ozzy has known him as long as I have. He’s now our business manager, mine and Ozzy’s – a
consigliere
to us both. Mette and Colin have four great children who were brought up with our three: their daughter Fleur – Kelly’s best friend – now works in the music industry and I’m always consulting her, soliciting her opinion on all the new upcoming bands. So Ozzy, Colin, Michele, Belle, Gloria and me, we all connect.

And finally, one of the friendships I value most of all is the one I share with Elton John and David Furnish. I’ve known them both for years – particularly Elton who I met way back when we were both just kids starting out. Whenever I have needed him, he’s been there for me and for my children too. This year he performed at the Nancy Davis ‘Race to Erase MS’ event where Jack was being honoured. He was meant to perform three songs but instead, Elton being Elton, he performed for over an hour.