Unbreakable: My New Autobiography (2 page)

‘Come on, my darlings,’ I say softly, heading out towards a shaded corner of the garden. ‘Let’s see what the day brings us, shall we?’

1

The Exit Factor

My final series of
The X Factor
did have a few fun moments.

O
n 20 October 2007, I stepped out on to the
X Factor
stage for the first live show of the fourth series. For three great years I’d had so much fun, helped some really talented people get their first break, thrown a few gallons of water over Louis Walsh and had a spat or three with Simon Cowell. I hadn’t laughed so much in a job in my life, or felt more comfortable.

I had spent a lifetime riding a roller-coaster, barely clinging on with my fingernails, from my chaotic childhood and confused adolescence to the adrenalin-fuelled years of life on the road, managing my husband’s career. Finally things seemed to be slowing down. I’d beaten cancer. My children were all doing well. Ozzy and I had moved into our new home a long way from the madhouse that became familiar to millions of viewers in
The Osbournes
, and we were looking forward to spending more time together and considering the possibility that we might even grow old.

The summer of 2007 had been a watershed. At the end of July, I lost my father. Don Arden was a legend in the industry, the Al Capone of rock promoters, famed and feared from LA to London. We’d spent half our lives at loggerheads – for twenty years we didn’t even speak – but he was still my dad, a man I looked up to, who taught me all I knew and whom, for all his many, many faults, I loved. For the past few years he had been suffering from Alzheimer’s, and the control freak who would happily have seen me dead a decade earlier was replaced by a sad old man who didn’t know where or who he was, let alone anyone else. To be honest, his death came as a relief – at the end, he was just an empty shell and life held no more enjoyment for him. At least now the suffering was over.

That evening at Wembley should have felt like a homecoming, but as the audience roared us to our seats at the judges’ table, I had a tight knot like a fist in my stomach. I knew before the show got started that this year was going to be very different. In fact, that’s an understatement. It would prove to be a nightmare.

Looking back now, the signs were there from the start. I was just too busy and too tired to spot them. The success of a show like
The X Factor
depends not only on the quality of the contestants, but also on the chemistry that exists between the judges. And for some reason, the mix of Simon, Louis and myself had worked. We sparked off each other; there was a healthy rivalry, and we each brought something subtly different to the mix. Simon had strength of character and he was opinionated and outspoken. I was also very direct but delivered the message with more heart. In addition, Simon and I never agreed about anything, which made for good television. As for Louis, not only does he have a great knowledge of music and the business, he also has a fantastic sense of humour and he loved to egg us on. He was the one with the spoon stirring it all up. We weren’t in competition with each other, not outside of the terms of the format of the show.

The first I knew that something was up was when I had a call from the producer, Richard Holloway, who told me that Louis had been fired. I was shocked.

Simon is someone who can’t stand still; he likes change. And as the owner and executive producer of the show, he could do whatever he liked. It was his prerogative. But I never for one minute thought it would happen. There was no personal animosity between them – on the contrary. Simon had signed two of Louis’s biggest bands so they had ongoing business together.

We soon learnt that getting shot of Louis wasn’t the last of the changes Simon had in mind. A fourth judge would be joining us, Dannii Minogue. I knew nothing about Dannii beyond her being Kylie’s sister, and I have always had a great respect for Kylie. But in one of those strange coincidences it turned out that my then PA, Silvana, who herself hailed from Down Under, actually knew Dannii personally. Silvana’s sister Tina, also a singer, had been at school with her, and in fact she and Dannii had started off in TV together. ‘You’ll love her,’ Silvana said. And I had no reason not to believe her.

So on day one, there were four of us. Simon and me, then Dannii and Brian Friedman, an American choreographer drafted in to replace Louis. On day two Simon took me to one side.

‘It’s not working, is it?’

‘No, it’s not,’ I said. ‘It’s terrible.’

‘I’ll get rid of Brian,’ he said.

‘Bring back Louis while you’re at it.’

And so it came to pass.

If I’m honest, I’d expected Dannii to be a bit flossy and sweet. She looked like a little doll! But I quickly realised she was sharp, smart and ambitious. I respected that and thought she could bring something new to the show.

And that was about the extent of my thoughts on Dannii during the early audition stages. She had seemed fine at that point. But then again, I hadn’t really had much to do with her. The audition stages can be quite a slog, travelling up and down the country. On top of that, I was making the journey over from LA. It was Birmingham one week, Manchester the next, Glasgow another, Cardiff another… So by the time I’d finished a long day of filming and given it my va-va-voom all, I’d invariably just retire to my room, have a bath, snuggle up in my favourite pink, fluffy dressing gown that goes everywhere with me, then call Ozzy and the kids to see how their day had been.

More often than not, my body clock was still on LA time anyway, so hanging around the hotel bar after filming had never been my thing. I might have managed it once or twice, but most nights I could be happily curled up in bed by 9 p.m. So at this stage, I had only really seen Dannii when we were filming, we didn’t socialise. From what I could tell, she seemed needy on set, but not with me. As it was her first time on the show, I think she was just keen to get it right, which was fair enough. As I say, she never bothered me. I would just do my bit then go off and seek my own space which, believe me, when you’ve had cameras thrust in your face all day, you desperately need.

After the audition stage had finished, I headed off back to America for the rest of the summer. The plan was to squirrel away at home and stay below the media parapet until the live shows started in October, so I didn’t do any interviews during this period and, being in the US, I wasn’t seeing any British newspapers at all.

However, my publicist in England would send me anything that related to me, and things started appearing in the press about how I was jealous of Dannii because I’m so much older, she’s so young and pretty, she’s so talented, she’s so this, she’s so that… blah, blah, the usual bollocks. I have been in the business a long time and know only too well that the media loves a good old feud story, it’s all part of the game. If you prod someone in the chest with a finger it gets blown out of all proportion and becomes a ‘punch-up’, but at least the story usually has
some
tiny germ of truth in it. However, this one didn’t and I genuinely had no problem with Dannii at all.

At first, I just mentally swatted it away, like an irritating fly. Tomorrow, I told myself, it will be chip paper. But the same theme kept on reappearing, building up a head of steam. As I hadn’t done any interviews about
The X Factor
, I couldn’t put the record straight. But never once in any interview that I’d read – and she seemed to have done about a million of the bloody things, and front-cover stories too – had Dannii said something along the lines of, ‘Look, that’s ridiculous, we get on just fine and there’s absolutely no problem here.’ And it irritated the hell out of me, because it was very simple: deny it and kill the myth. So I’m not saying she perpetuated it, but from what I read she certainly didn’t deflect it either.

By the time the first live show came around, I had worked myself up into a bit of a lather, particularly as the same old shit about me being jealous had started up
again
. Once you’re on set, you hit the ground running. There’s barely time to run to the loo during rehearsals, let alone address a thorny issue, so I decided that backstage before the live show started would be the best option.

Silvana and I talked tactics and decided that, given her history and friendship with Dannii, it would be friendlier and less confrontational if she approached her on my behalf.

So she headed off down the corridor, popped her head round Dannii’s dressing-room door and asked politely whether she had a couple of minutes spare to have a quick chat with me.

No, she couldn’t come now as she was getting ready, and apparently up against the clock. Well, that pissed me off. We had at least another two hours before the show started, so we were hardly pushed for time. Given the circumstances, I thought she could have been more gracious.

About half an hour later, I asked Silvana if she would mind returning to the little madam’s boudoir and asking again whether she could spare some of her precious time to grant me a brief audience. She reappeared again a couple of minutes later, looking sheepish.

‘Sorry, it’s another no. Maybe later.’

That was it. I felt the familiar hot swell of fury rise in my chest, the same red mist that has blurred my better judgement on countless other occasions. I admit it. I have a very bad temper, but at times like this I just can’t help it. I’m someone who wears my heart on my sleeve and I can’t be contrived. Much as I would sometimes like to, I can’t have a stern word with myself and retreat into a corner until I’m more composed. After an outburst, I have often reflected that it would have been far better to retaliate with a measured, devastatingly damning riposte. But instead, I always go BANG, say what’s on my mind and then think, Oh shit, did I
really
just do that?

So I was off, heading out of the door like an Exocet missile propelled by sheer fury.

As well as Silvana, my publicist Gary Farrow was in my dressing room at the time, and so was the woman in charge of press for Simon Cowell’s TV company Syco.

‘You lot are coming with me because I am going in that fucking dressing room
now
.’ I just wanted to deal with it.

I went charging down the hallway and hammered on the door. When her shocked assistant answered, I threw myself into the room. Dannii was sitting in front of the mirror, being made up. She had rollers in her hair, but still looked annoyingly gorgeous.

‘I want a word with you. What the
fuck
is going on?’ I demanded.

‘What are you talking about? I don’t understand.’ Her mouth had fallen open in shock.

‘I have absolutely no problem with you, so what’s all this negative press?’

‘I honestly don’t know what you are talking about. This is ridiculous.’ She looked uncomfortable. ‘I’ve got to get ready and I’m nervous, this is my first live show…’

And that was it. She turned back to the mirror and made it very clear that the conversation, if that’s what you could call it, was over.

Nervous! Oh
please
, she’d been prancing up and down on stages since she was a fucking foetus, so the notion that a few TV cameras were suddenly going to faze her was utterly laughable. Gary could sense that I still had plenty of fuel left in my tank for carrying it on, so got hold of my arm and started to guide me towards the exit.

‘Just stop it,’ I shot back over my shoulder at Dannii before flouncing out with as much dignity as I could muster.

It was her birthday that day and what made it even more annoying was that I had bought her a gorgeous Chanel handbag, which I’d left in her room earlier with a little card. It had cost me eighteen hundred quid; a lot of money whichever way you look at it. Oh well, I thought, she’ll probably give back the handbag after my little outburst, so at least something good will come of it. I rather fancied it for myself anyway. But no. Just as Zsa Zsa Gabor once said that she never hated a man enough to give back his diamonds, Dannii Minogue clearly didn’t hate me enough to give back a designer handbag.

A little later, we were all standing behind the giant screen that the judges walk through at the start of each live show. Simon was on camera right, with Dannii next to him, then me, then Louis. Me and Louis were in a heightened state of anticipation, sharing jokes. By then, I had virtually forgotten the little contretemps. I had made my position clear – albeit loudly and colourfully – and, as far as I was concerned, we could move on.

But to my left?
Nada
. It was like the Berlin Wall had been rebuilt in the six-inch space between us. She wouldn’t even look at me. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. She started whispering something in Simon’s ear, like a bloody kid in the playground, and Louis rolled his eyes at me. We felt like we had herpes.

Then suddenly
The X Factor
theme tune came powering out of the speakers, once again sending goosebumps up my arms and back. I could feel the adrenalin pumping around my body, prompting a delicious exhilaration that, just for a few seconds, always made me feel invincible. And, invariably, prompted me to do something mischievous.