Unbreakable: My New Autobiography (14 page)

And, to boot, I have the most
fabulous
décolletage. Yes, dear reader, I confess. While I was under the anaesthetic for the second operation I figured that, as I was out for the count anyway, I might as well make the most of it. So while they were waiting for my body fat to spin in that wondrous little machine, I asked them to give me a cheeky little neck lift while they were at it. I always push it.

But not as much as my husband who, throughout all my time in hospital for these procedures, only came to see me once. And during that
one
visit he took a photograph of me, completely out of it, my face puffed up from the anaesthetic, my eyes like slits, my mouth dribbling. I didn’t realise it had been taken until he sent it to me as a text message a few days after getting home. I was so upset about it that I went through the fucking roof.

‘Why on earth would you do that? What’s the fucking point you’re trying to make?’ I shouted.

‘I just thought it was funny,’ he said, and shrugged.

Not for the first time, I wondered if he knew me at all. Yes, I was angry, but actually, it broke my heart.

9

Pearly Princess

Look at that face!

A
fter quite a few years of battling with substance abuse in his teens, my son Jack was finally in a really good place: clean and sober since the age of seventeen, super fit and gaining a reputation as quite a daredevil with TV shows like
Adrenaline Junkie
. His life was very much, ‘Oh Mum, at the end of the month I’m off down the Amazon with some mates,’ or, ‘I’m going to climb a mountain, I’ll be back in six weeks.’ The mere thought of it gave me a heart attack each time, but I was thrilled that he had found something he loved doing and was really good at.

In April 2011, he started dating a girl called Lisa Stelly. I had met her a couple of times and really liked her. She was a working model, and had done TV commercials and was making a good living from it. She was a beautiful, long-legged young woman from Louisiana, with that lovely Southern accent, and it was no mystery to me what Jack saw in her. But it was very early days between them, so their relationship wasn’t something I gave much thought to. Then, about three months after they met, Jack called me while I was staying a couple of nights in town.

‘Mum, are you around? We need to talk.’

Now if this had come from Kelly, I would instantly go into mental free fall and think, What
has
she done now? But as Jack was so sensible, I imagined it was a business matter he wanted to discuss with me, or another madcap, dangerous adventure he was embarking on. So as he walked in the door, I had mentally prepared myself for all the nail-biting details.

‘Hi, Mum. Now, look, don’t panic and don’t get upset…’

Which, of course, immediately made me panic. My heart was in my chest, my mind racing with all the possibilities of what he was about to tell me. Well, all except the
actual
one.

‘Lisa’s pregnant.’

A wave of different emotions washed over me. One of them, of course, was joy, because there was a new life coming into the world. But then I was sad too, because my son and his girlfriend barely knew each other, and I knew that from this moment on his life would never be the same again. All I could think of for a while was that I didn’t know Lisa, and I just hoped she loved my son. You don’t always know after two or three months, and I doubt she knew then either.

Ozzy was away on tour at the time, so I called to tell him. He never thinks of consequences, he just focuses on that one thing. So he says, ‘A baby? That’s amazing,’ and meanwhile I’m sitting there thinking, Oh my God. What happens if it doesn’t work, and one of them meets somebody they fall in love with and then gets married and goes?

Because as a mother, all these scenarios go through your head; you can’t help it. But Jack’s telling me, ‘You can’t think like that, Mum. You’ve just got to think about the positive.’

I had expected the first pregnancy to be one of my girls; I never expected it to be Jack, who is the baby of the family. And as he led such an active, outdoorsy sort of life, it just wasn’t on the cards.

He was the first to acknowledge that he and Lisa were only just getting to know each other. But there was only ever one outcome. Lisa is very religious, and she’s totally against abortion – as is Jack, though his views have nothing to do with religion. He just doesn’t agree with it.

I really admired him for doing the right thing. There are so many guys who would have gone, ‘Forget it; I’m off.’ He didn’t. He was responsible and supportive, and just amazing.

‘All we can do,’ he said, ‘is try our hardest to make it work, and see if we can become a couple. We’re not thinking about marriage yet; we’re just thinking about the baby. So we’ve decided that Lisa’s going to move in with me.’

Now Jack’s house was a classic bachelor pad, up in the Hollywood Hills. There were about forty bloody steps up to it, and my first thought was, Well,
that’s
going to be fun, carting a buggy up those.

So I knew straight away that we were going to have to sell the place, because it just wasn’t child-friendly, but I really admired them. It was such a grown-up approach to a difficult situation, and they are from totally different backgrounds and cultures. It was especially tough for her to say she was pregnant, coming from the very close-knit and religious Southern family she does. Her brother-in-law is a preacher.

Initially I supposed that I might not be as involved in the pregnancy as I would have been if it was, say, Aimee or Kelly who was having the baby, but Lisa was incredibly thoughtful towards me in everything. She let me be a part of all the ultrasound scans, which I thought was an amazing thing to do.

I would look at the jellybean on the screen, then across at my son. And suddenly I was rewinding a quarter of a century and it was me having the scan and looking at Jack on the screen. You don’t realise how quickly time passes, and to me, it might have been yesterday that I had him. Then I would snap out of it and think, What
am
I doing? I’m insane.

It was so special to be there, watching my son’s face as he saw his tiny daughter on the screen. He was just overwhelmed. Overwhelmed and overjoyed. And I was really happy to see that, because there were times when so many people – Jack’s friends included – thought the whole thing was crazy, saying, ‘It’s never going to work,’ and, ‘You’re nuts to even try,’ and yet here they were, Jack and Lisa, two young people united in love for their unborn child.

Pearl entered our lives on 24 April 2012. It was a natural birth, with Lisa’s mum in the delivery room with her, plus her sister who was videoing it, while Jack, Ozzy, Kelly and I were waiting outside in the hallway along with other members of Lisa’s family.

Lisa had had a couple of false starts but when she was about ten days late, they decided to bring her in and induce her. When I heard the news, I remember becoming aware of my heart beating faster. My first grandchild. I took a few deep breaths and it was a case of, Right, this is it. Now. Nothing will ever be the same again. By the end of the day there’ll be a baby. A new little Osbourne. And in the end, everything went perfectly. There was no panic, it was all very controlled and bonding. Exactly the way you would want it to be.

When Pearl was born, it was indescribably moving. Now I understand why people become midwives – the emotion, the wonder, the glory of it, is intoxicating. To be in the presence of something so extraordinary, to share this moment, this everyday miracle, was a privilege. I kept looking at Jack’s face the whole time, and I could tell that he was trying as hard as I was to stay composed but, of course, he broke down and cried. We all did, but the two brand-new grandmothers out-sobbed everyone else.

The midwife swaddled the precious bundle in a blanket and we took turns cradling her as we welcomed this new addition to our two families. She was a complete amalgam of the two of them, with Jack’s mouth and chin and Lisa’s nose and eyes. I was so moved, and just couldn’t stop the tears from cascading down my cheeks. With her wisp of pale brown hair, still damp from her momentous journey, she was just adorable and I was overwhelmed with love for her.

The joy on her parents’ faces was plain for all to see, and I felt instinctively at that point that, despite the shock of the pregnancy so early in their relationship, they were going to do just fine.

I was still in a state of trance, talking to my co-grandmother Gerri, each of us trying to find the words to express our emotion, creating a bond between us that will last a lifetime. And then my phone rang.

It was Simon Cowell. Blimey, I thought, news travels fast. Pearl’s only minutes out of the pod and already he’s calling to congratulate me. In fact, I was particularly pleased when I saw his name flash up as, only the previous week, me and my big mouth had been making headlines with Simon as the focus, and I wasn’t sure how he had taken it.

In his supposedly authorised biography
Sweet Revenge: The Intimate Life of Simon Cowell
, there was a random, throwaway sentence where Simon was quoted as saying that he didn’t like working with me. No reason was given, no explanation, which made it even more baffling. I had always thought Simon and I had a good working relationship and made good television together, so I was hurt, really hurt. And when the subject of his remark was raised on
The Talk
, I said that he was clearly suffering from small penis syndrome. I don’t know why I said it, beyond wanting to hurt him. Saying that he had a small dick was all I could think of that might upset him as much as he had upset me.

It was totally ridiculous. I have never seen Simon in the altogether. I don’t even know why I felt so hurt. Normally, if it isn’t someone close, if I don’t give a fuck about somebody, then I don’t give a fuck what they think about me. But this felt different. Perhaps it was because I held him in such high esteem and have so much respect for what he’s achieved that it hit me in the solar plexus. I had always enjoyed working with him, and his comment meant that the feeling wasn’t reciprocated, which was humiliating.

However, what I said in return was obviously a joke. After all, how would a woman of my age in whom Simon had zero sexual interest know
what
size his bloody penis was? But of course the press seized on it and my flip comment got picked up worldwide.

Cut to one week later and there I was, a proud new grandmother, beaming from ear to ear and thrilled that Simon’s call of congratulation meant that all was forgiven and forgotten. Water off a duck’s back.

‘Sharon, it’s Simon. Why did you say that about me?’

Oh dear. He wasn’t calling about the birth.

‘Because you hurt
me
by saying you didn’t like working with me.’

‘I don’t
want
to hurt you.’

‘And I don’t want to hurt
you
.’

‘Good, so can we agree to stop it, then?’

‘Absolutely.’

And that was it. We called a truce and made up. Then I told him about Pearl and he was genuinely delighted.

I think that Simon loves beautiful young women, which is totally normal, and he loves to be surrounded by them at all times. I don’t fall into that category, so as he’s a very busy man, and I’m a very busy woman, there has been no time for us really to get to know each other properly.

That’s a shame, because I think we have the potential to be very good friends.

After the birth, Gerri stayed with Lisa and Jack for the first six weeks to help out. She and Lisa’s father, Pat, live in New Iberia, Louisiana, midway between New Orleans and Houston, Texas. Whichever way you look, it’s a long trek to California – they have to change planes twice. So I was glad that she was able to get some quality time with her new granddaughter before heading home.

By then, Jack and Lisa had moved from the place with the forty steps to a lovely house in Los Feliz, Hollywood, which is a very young, creative, hipster district. Looking after a baby together is such a bond, and they are in no rush to get a nanny. They take care of Pearl themselves, and it’s just lovely. Jack is very hands-on with everything and Lisa is such a confident, assured mother, despite it being her first time. She’s made a wonderful home for Jack. She adores him and she’s a fantastic mum. I couldn’t ask for anything more for my son.

When Pearl was about a week old, Ozzy and I were over there visiting and we could tell there was something on their minds, but in a nice way.

‘We’ve decided to get married,’ said Jack, grinning with happiness. And it felt so natural, absolutely the right thing for them to do. They had barely known each other a year, but when you know, you know.

And what a year it had been. He’d had to move out of the bachelor pad he loved so much, his cherished bulldog Lola had died – a great character he’d had for thirteen years, since he was barely into his teens. And then he got appendicitis. He’d called me one evening saying he had a terrible stomach ache.