Unbreakable: My New Autobiography (17 page)

First, my family, and Ozzy especially, are terrified about me going under a general anaesthetic unless I absolutely have to. That old heart I mentioned? It’s endured enough surgical procedures already, not to mention the strain of several courses of chemotherapy. There’s only so much the human body can take, and I feel that mine has already been pushed to its limits. It doesn’t need any more stress placed on it in my endless pursuit of youth.

But second, my cancer, the mastectomy and, more importantly, Jack’s illness, put everything into perspective for me. When you witness your own or your child’s body having to fight a genuine threat, choosing to put it through the mill for the purposes of vanity seems beyond idiotic. Looking back now, I am genuinely disturbed by how many times I have been under the surgeon’s knife in pursuit of a physical ‘perfection’ that doesn’t exist.

People often talk about having ‘good days’ and ‘bad days’ when they look in the mirror, ‘Oh, I’m having a “fat” day,’ or, ‘Wow, I look really great this morning.’ Well, I had
never
looked in the mirror and liked what I saw. Never. In my mind, I had always been fat, hairy, with little legs and disproportionately large tits, and nothing I could ever do to my body would change that. But boy, did I try.

My obsession with having cosmetic surgery is well documented, particularly since I started doing television and became better known. I have always felt that if you’re in the public eye, you should be honest about what you’ve had done so that other women don’t have unrealistic expectations. They should know that there’s nothing natural about it, that it costs shitloads of money to look that way and that you are putting your body through brutal surgical procedures.

I was having things done long
before
I became famous. I started altering myself even before I was married. I had what I called
National Geographic
tits – very pendulous – so I first had them reduced and lifted in 1978. I was a bit of a pioneer. Then there was my first facelift in 1987, when I was just thirty-five years old! Trouble is, because of my yo-yoing weight (I would get big then I would lose the weight really quickly), I would be left with excess saggy skin. So it was this eternal merry-go-round of hate myself, eat; hate myself, diet; hate myself, have surgery; hate myself, eat… you get the picture. I was every cosmetic surgeon’s perfect customer. I should have been given a fucking loyalty card.

Then there was another facelift, around 2002, I think, and over the years I have had my legs lifted, my arms lifted, my breasts done again and my tummy tucked after I had the gastric band. Much of the surgery was because my fluctuating weight left me with hideously droopy skin. And I thought if I just had perfect breasts, then my
life
would be perfect, too. Dumb, huh?

The trouble is, you start doing it, then you come round from the operation and think, OK, that was pretty easy. Then you look in the mirror and, although you’re not completely perfect, you quite like what you see and that gives you a bit of confidence. Then that confidence eventually starts to ebb and you miss it, and the next thing you know, you’re back having another op to boost yourself up again. It’s a vicious and gory cycle.

I used to have Botox and fillers, too, but not any more. It’s terrible stuff. I had fillers just before Lisa’s baby shower and a couple of days later, when I looked at the photographs of me, I was shocked. From certain angles, I looked
really
odd. Very plastic. My eyes were like slits, my cheeks puffy. I looked like a completely different person, as if I was wearing a mask. There I was, supposedly celebrating the imminent arrival of my granddaughter, and my face was virtually incapable of expression.

I don’t think I’m as bad as some women, like Jocelyn ‘Bride of’ Wildenstein. But I had definitely fallen into the trap of thinking I looked OK without frown or laughter lines, not realising that the minute you start talking or trying to smile, you look like an alien that’s lost contact with the mother ship.

For me, the baby-shower pictures were a defining moment. I thought, Holy crap, it was only a few injections and look at the
state
of me. It was at that point that I decided no more Botox and fillers, thank you very much. I’m
so
over it. It felt like liquid concrete that had completely changed the angle of my features, and not in a good way. Unless, of course, you want to look like a fucking hamster.

I’m pleased to report that my face has settled down since then and I can actually
move
the bloody thing.

There’s nothing worse than someone having everything they want done, then turning around to everyone else and preaching that they shouldn’t do the same, I realise that. But after advocating cosmetic surgery and non-surgical procedures for so long, I feel it is only right to pass on that my opinion has changed. It’s a fine line, really. If you hate your nose or ears and they make you feel self-conscious, then having them tweaked or pinned back will probably change your life. I get that, and if either of my daughters felt that way, I would say, ‘Go right ahead.’ Similarly, I know what it’s like to hate your tits, so if you’re a young woman and you genuinely feel embarrassed taking your top off in front of someone, then who am I to say that you shouldn’t do something about it with a one-off procedure?

What I’m talking about is women like me who hate what they see in the mirror and will keep on having surgery because we don’t know how to stop.

Wrinkles and sagging are part of life, I realise that now; they’re part of
you
. And every time you go under the knife for vanity, you are slicing off yet more of your self-worth, too. Far better to find other ways of trying to feel comfortable with who you are. Jack’s diagnosis and my mastectomy were both lines in the sand for me, but turning sixty may be part of it, as well as becoming a grandmother and finally realising that there is so much more to life than fretting about your droopy bits.

In between my many cosmetic surgery operations, I would also embark on some of the most ludicrous diets known to woman. There was the gastric band, of course, but I have also done powders, pills, the cactus diet, the cabbage soup diet, the purée diet, the fasting-every-other-day diet, the South Beach diet. You name it, I have been on it.

The lightest I have ever been is 107 pounds (seven stone, nine pounds), but even then I would never be the girl to wear the shortest skirt, or even a bikini on the beach. I have never strutted around naked in front of my husband – I’m always swathed in something because I don’t like my body. The perfect era for me would have been Victorian times when they took ladies to the water’s edge in a carriage and you dropped into the sea unseen.

Now I’m on the Atkins diet and it seems to be working for me. My weight has started to drop steadily rather than rapidly, which is an encouraging sign. My experience has always been that losing the pounds isn’t that hard, it’s
maintaining
the weight loss that’s the tricky bit. And you have more chance of success if you have lost the weight slowly and sensibly. This is the first diet I have done where I can actually go to a restaurant and order something from the menu, like steak and vegetables, or fish.

Ozzy tried it too, and he lost a lot of weight initially, though he goes back and forth on it – much like I do. Ozzy cares very much about his weight, with good reason. Performing at the level he does, doing two-hour shows a night, he needs to be a comfortable weight. And to achieve that, Ozzy works out every single day, obsessively.

I, however, will have a little voice in my head that says,
Go to the gym, go to the gym
, and I will think, In a minute, in a minute. I need someone to be standing next to me, constantly prodding me in the back until I do it. For the last year I have worked with a personal trainer. Her name is Michelle Woolf, known to her clients as Woolfie, and we’ve become great mates. Even when I moan and say I can’t do it, she will come and grab me and push me into the gym and if I moan too much, she’ll make me do double.

Over the first three months I steadily lost twenty-five pounds – almost two stone – and had just eight more pounds to lose to reach my ideal weight. Then it was down to four. Nearly there! It was all looking so promising and then I sabotaged myself by starting to eat junk food again. Some people starve themselves when they’re unhappy or feeling a bit low, but I comfort-eat. I know when I’m doing it that I really shouldn’t, that I will put on weight that I have worked so hard to lose, but I still do it because it feels
soooo
good at the time. And then I disappoint myself.

I went for therapy a few times to try and get to the bottom of it but frankly, I got bored of talking about myself. I just wanted to scream, ‘Can we talk about something else now?’ Or I’d find myself saying things I didn’t really feel, just for the sake of it, to fill the silence in the room. So I stopped going.

By the time you get to my age, you can pretty much analyse yourself anyway. The plain facts are that it’s not just about dieting. It’s about a lifestyle change, which means mind, body and soul. Yes, you can lose weight – anyone can lose weight – but you cannot maintain it without life changes, which means exercise. You must take care of your body. It’s only taken me sixty years to accept this and to stop the voices inside my head saying, ‘Eat that cake! You can start the diet on Monday.’

However much I crave carbs and sabotage my diet occasionally, I always have a cut-off point in my head now. After all my medical problems, I know that I can’t go back to being 230 pounds (sixteen and a half stone) again, it’s too unhealthy. I just can’t allow myself to become that person again. In many ways, I’m fighting pretty lousy odds, anyway. My mother and father were both prone to weight problems and had short, stumpy legs. Some people inherit a lump sum from their parents; I just got a lumpy body.

So I’m short and I’m small-boned, and when I’m in one of my ‘big’ phases, it’s all fat that you can see. Never mind the aesthetics; that’s so unhealthy for someone of my age. When you’re too heavy, your knees go, your back goes, your feet swell. And I don’t want to find myself struggling to stand up, so that’s why I
always
go back on the diet after a self-inflicted sabotage. Besides, I hate waking up one morning to find that the blouse I really like suddenly won’t do up any more, or my trousers are too tight, or my favourite ring won’t slip on to my big, fat, puffy finger.

When I’m being a good girl, I have egg and bacon for breakfast, then when I’m at
The Talk
I invariably have a salad of avocado, beansprouts, tomatoes, maybe some carrots. It really does fill me up, and it works.
If
I stick to it.

If I’m being a bad girl, I will stuff my face with pasta, chips or – my absolute downfall every time – strawberry cream cake. God, I love it. If it’s there in the fridge, I just can’t
not
eat it and, if I’m feeling a bit down on myself, I will ask my housekeeper Saba to buy one so that it’s there when I get home.

There is one habit I have managed to kick. Every single morning, without fail, I would drink a huge glass of Coca-Cola to get me going. The full-on sugared stuff, not the diet version. Whenever I felt tired I would drink it, get the sugar rush, then get the slump. So then I would drink it again to bring me out of the slump. But since I have been doing Atkins, I haven’t touched it. In fact, I don’t have fizzy drinks at all, which is a massive bonus to my diet because, sugar-wise, they are dreadful. I have also trained myself to eat fruit, which I
never
used to do, and I’m getting better at eating vegetables, although I accept that I will never be the kind of person who chews on a stick of celery because I actually enjoy it.

I’m not a beauty or fashion icon, I’m just a normal person who got lucky. I can scrub up pretty well for my age, with the help of a good make-up artist and some flattering lighting, but the rest of the time I honestly couldn’t give a toss what I look like. I often go out without make-up on looking a right old sight.

When Jack and Lisa were moving into their new house, I was helping to shift boxes and clean floors, like all mothers do for their kids. After a while, we were all starving, so we went to Madeo’s Restaurant in West Hollywood, and when we came out the paparazzi were outside. I was wearing a pair of baggy old jeans and a T-shirt, and had a scarf on my head because my hair was all over the place. The next thing I know, I’ve got Louis Walsh on the phone taking the piss and calling me a scruffy old cow. How dare he!

12

Here We Go Again

Ozzy and I renewing our vows in 2002, twenty years after our first wedding. I would never have imagined then that our thirtieth wedding anniversary would be the beginning of one of the worst periods in our turbulent marriage.

O
n 4 July 2012, my husband and I celebrated our thirtieth wedding anniversary.

I would like to be able to tell you that he organised the delivery of a vast bouquet of flowers before taking me for a candlelit supper for two.