Unbreakable: My New Autobiography (24 page)

Ozzy was one of the lucky few who did get out. Ozzy’s escape was daydreaming that he was going to be a Beatle, or that his sister was going to marry one of the Fab Four and he could join them on the road. For him, the next best thing was to form a band with his mates, and
voilà
: the rest is heavy-metal history.

But even though he got out of Aston, the entrenched pattern of behaviour he’d learnt as a child stayed with him, as did mine. We were both working-class – though my background was more feast or famine – and we both came from families that, in different ways, were fucking nuts. But somehow we have built a life together and come out the other side of all the shit we’ve been through. We’ve invested our time, our youth, our love and our
soul
into what we have.

We all have dreams, but I have now accepted the reality: that I am married to an alcoholic and drug addict who, every single day, has to fight
not
to be that way.

As for me, I have come to the conclusion that I am seriously workaholic. This destructive behaviour has not helped my marriage, my kids, or my health. I am like a hamster on a wheel. Over the last thirteen years all I’ve done is chase my tail. Yes, I’ve loved the success, the adulation, the money, the power. But when you’re sixty years old you have to ask yourself, What the fuck am I doing it for? I run from one project to another, fighting the clock. Fighting for an hour with my granddaughter, or an hour with my husband or my children. For what? At the end of the day all we have is each other. With any luck, I’ll make it to seventy-five. And if I do, what will I have? Hopefully my husband and my kids, and memories. But do I really want to spend the rest of my life running around the world to get my face on TV? I’m not building a career, I’m way past that. Why was it never enough to be a manager, a wife and a mother? I got the taste of fame. I do truly love working in TV. Has it now become my drug? Yes. I’ve met amazing people, made amazing friends. Done incredible things, but I do realise that you can’t have it all. Because of my work schedule and Ozzy’s, we’ve been parted for weeks at a time. Not good. Not healthy.

And it’s my fault. For the last thirteen years I’ve lived a life of no balance; it’s been either great highs or deep lows. The truth is, if I was Ozzy I’d be pissed off with me too. In fact, I am pissed off at myself. You’d think that at this age I’d have it all sorted. I’m as clueless now as I was at sixteen. The only difference is that I’m aware of it now. And I’m trying. My catchwords now are ‘balance’ and ‘moderation’. I’ll let you know.

16

The Wild Card

Making my
X Factor
return in typically OTT style!

W
hen I accepted Richard Curtis’s invitation in 2013 to do a sketch for Comic Relief, it wasn’t just altruism at work, nor even the opportunity to work with David Walliams. It was the script. The working title was ‘Simon Cowell’s Wedding’, and Simon himself had agreed to be involved. I hadn’t seen him since the last episode of
America’s Got Talent
, when I’d walked out. Then there had been the business of his biography, and my telling the world on live TV that he had a small dick. Almost a year had passed since we’d declared our truce over the phone on the day Pearl was born, but saying that you’re all fine with each other is one thing; you never know for sure until you see the whites of their eyes.

And it wasn’t only Simon who would be there. If they all played ball, it would be a roll call of
X Factor
faces. And as I was whisked through the English countryside after landing at Heathrow, I had butterflies in my stomach. Whether it was nerves or excitement, I don’t know. More likely a combination of both.

The conceit of the sketch is that Simon is standing at the altar with a mystery bride whose face is obscured by a veil. As this is his wedding, all his various friends and acquaintances are there in the congregation.

When I arrived, Simon was filming some of his scenes, so we just nodded and smiled at each other across the pews.
Britain’s Got Talent
judges Amanda Holden and Alesha Dixon were there, dressed as bridesmaids, and the seated guests included previous contestants Stavros Flatley, Rylan Clark, Pudsey the dog and Sinitta, dressed only in palm fronds and weeping because
she
wasn’t the bride. Paul Potts led a choir made up of those gorgeous boys from JLS. It was quite a cast.

Meanwhile, in a room at the back of the church, were Dermot O’Leary, Olly Murs, David Walliams and I, all waiting for our big moment.

As Simon was about to take his vows, David ran up the aisle and tried to stop ‘my Simon’ from marrying the mystery bride, followed swiftly by Olly Murs, Dermot O’Leary and Louis Walsh all wearing white gowns too and declaring undying love for him. I nearly wet myself when I saw Louis wearing what was supposed to be a replica of Kate Middleton’s wedding dress but which, on him, looked as if it had been cobbled together from my nan’s curtains.

Then came my entrance as, bursting into the church, also wearing a wedding dress, I push aside these other contenders for Simon’s hand.

‘Simon,
I
want to marry you.’

‘Really?’ He looked perplexed. ‘But I thought you hated me.’

‘I do. But I want to marry you so that I can ruin the rest of your life.’

Needless to say, he turns me down, then lifts the veil of the bride to reveal that he is marrying himself.

As a sketch it was absolutely hilarious, cleverly taking the piss out of all of us. And it was particularly brave of Simon, I thought. Although I was laughing along with the rest of them, it felt weird finding myself in a wedding dress, given the state of my marriage. By now the butterflies had totally gone, but the rumblings of nausea were still gurgling away in my stomach. And I realised that they had nothing to do with what was happening here today, and everything to do with the crap I was dealing with back home.

No one present in the church had the faintest clue what I was going through at the time, not even Louis. As I always do in such situations, I was playing good old fun Sharon, being outrageously camp and cracking jokes like the best of them. Anything but reveal the depressing reality of my life at that time.

It felt nice to have some uncomplicated fun without the burden of having to face up to my problems.

Once the director had declared a wrap on filming, the lovely Sinitta came to find me. Thankfully minus the palm fronds by now.

‘Are you coming for dinner?’

She and Simon are very old friends, and I knew that the invitation would include him.

‘I haven’t been asked,’ I smiled, glancing over her shoulder as he walked up behind her.

‘Of course you have,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘Come on, you’ve
got
to come.’

We ended up at the Arts Club in Mayfair, just me, Louis, Simon and his on-off girlfriend Mezhgan Hussainy and Sinitta and her boyfriend. It was just like old times, and we had a great evening, with banter flying back and forth across the table. We talked a lot about things that had gone on in the past, dredging up old stories from the early
X Factor
days.

It felt so lovely to be there, just laughing and joking and not having to worry about anyone else at the table. If Ozzy, by some miracle, had come out with us, I would have spent the duration being his social lubricant because, first, his damaged hearing means he can’t always get what people say in noisy restaurants, and second, they can’t always understand what
he’s
saying, so I have to act as go-between. It was great to sit there and think only of myself.

Occasionally, one of them would ask me a question about Ozzy, and I would just bat it off with, ‘Oh, he’s being a wanker, the same as usual,’ but none of them knew that I really,
really
meant it.

Eventually the coffee cups were cleared away and we all had to leave. Simon’s a very hard person to read at the best of times, but as far as I could tell, he had acted perfectly normally with me, both at the church and in the restaurant, so I left feeling relieved that clearly there was no issue between us. Normal service was resumed.

A few weeks later, he called me. Did I want to be a judge on
X Factor Australia
? he asked. The Aussies knew me well because
The Osbournes
was very successful out there.

My immediate thought was, Why the fuck not? A whole change of scene, good money, and, best of all, considering my disposition towards him at the time, I would be thousands of miles away from my husband, who by this point was having the motherfucker of all mid-life crises somewhere in the Buckinghamshire countryside. Send me the contract – where do I bloody sign?

It was Jack who brought me down to earth. ‘Listen, Mum, you can’t do this. You will make yourself
ill
,’ he warned when I told him with great excitement about the offer.

Admittedly, on paper the schedule did look slightly manic, particularly as I was planning to film three live shows of
The Talk
from Tuesday to Thursday, then pre-record one on the Thursday afternoon before hopping on a seventeen-hour flight to Australia for
The X Factor
at weekends then heading back to LA in time to film
The Talk
again on Tuesday. It was clearly insane, but I buried any misgivings and ploughed on with negotiations.

I didn’t consult Ozzy because we weren’t speaking back then, just exchanging the occasional text about Sabbath business. Looking back, I’m sure that part of my wanting to do the Australian
X Factor
was yet again to prove to him that I was my own person and didn’t need his permission to go.

Kelly was the next to join the queue of doom-mongers. ‘Mum, you’re fucking mad,’ she said. ‘You cannot
physically
do this, never mind mentally. You’re just not up to it. It’ll kill you.’

Deep down, I knew she was right. In the AA programme they call it ‘doing a geographic’, when people move away because they think it will help solve their problems. But of course you can never escape what’s going on inside your own head. In the end, it was Jack who finally broke through to me.

‘If you do this, Mum, you’ll never get to see Pearl. And even if you do, you’ll be like a zombie. Is that what you want?’

So, just as it got to the wire, I pulled out. Syco were pretty annoyed with me, and I don’t blame them, but I had finally accepted that running off to the other side of the world, away from my kids and grandkid, was not going to solve my problems. The only way to have made it work would have been to move there for three months solid, which I couldn’t do as it would have meant giving up
The Talk
, which had become a lifeline for me.

Then, a couple of days later, I got a call from Richard Holloway, executive producer of
The X Factor
UK and the man who had tried so valiantly to act as mediator between me and Dannii Minogue all those years ago. Would I be interested in returning as a judge for the tenth anniversary series, which started filming in three months’ time?

‘Is this a fucking wind-up?’

‘No, darling, absolutely not. It’s the real deal.’

I still couldn’t quite believe it. During one of our weekly phone calls, Louis and I had discussed the possibility of me going back, but only in a nostalgic, wouldn’t-it-be-lovely kind of way. I don’t think either of us imagined it would actually happen.

Yet here they were, at Simon’s instigation I presumed, offering me a chance to complete the circle, to go back for this milestone series and put things right. I had hated leaving like I did, so I relished the thought of going back to see all the old crew and picking up where I’d left off.

When I told the kids, they
still
thought it was a bad idea because of the major travel involved, but LA to London was far more doable than the flight to Australia. And, from my point of view, as I told them, the opportunity to make amends
and
distract myself from the chaotic state of my marriage was too good to miss. So I said yes, yes, YES!

I hadn’t breathed a word about it to Ozzy, who was now away on tour and still attempting to stay sober. I wasn’t hiding anything from him, as we weren’t living together when the negotiations started, and I didn’t think it was any of his fucking business at that time.

The first two days of filming were 4 and 5 June in Glasgow, and I jetted in from LA the night before. I was really looking forward to it, but also felt slightly unnerved by being the new girl on an already established judging panel. Would I fit in?

Obviously, I knew I was replacing former judge Tulisa Contostavlos, and that Louis had really enjoyed working with her, but other than that I didn’t really know much about her. However, just before I arrived in Glasgow, a story had broken about her allegedly setting up a drug deal for an undercover reporter, and I felt nothing but sympathy for the poor girl. She’s young, she’s vulnerable and she doesn’t seem to have good people around her. Or she does, and she’s not listening to their advice. But either way, everything is celebrity-driven now and you have to know how to handle that, but how can you when you’re still in your early twenties? That could so easily have been Kelly when she was hanging out with the wrong crowd in London, so even though I had never met Tulisa, my heart went out to her.