Rock matriarch writes about life, family & more

In the early sixties my father had got involved with the Star Club in Hamburg; later he became a partner with Manfred Weissleder. The Star Club is famous for being the place where the Beatles first made their name. John Lennon idolized Gene Vincent, and knowing his connection with my father, asked Don if he would manage them, and my father said no. It was like, "English rock and roll? Don't make me laugh." The Beatles were just copycats, he said. They wouldn't last. He was only interested in Americans, and so he continued to bring them over: Carl Perkins, Brian Hyland, Brenda Lee, Little Eva, who was only five years older than me. But tastes in music had changed and he lost money hand over fist.

Apart from artists, the only other regular visitors to Angell Road were repo men and process servers, although they were never allowed past the front door. My brother said he could tell who it was by the knock. I couldn't. But it was me they sent to open it, because I was small for my age and the idea was they'd feel sorry for me. And yet once you saw them, standing on the step, you knew who they were by their lack of expression and the way they were dressed. It was like a uniform: the raincoat, the trilby hat. It was born in you to know. And it was like, Oh God, so the TV's going back again to Granada or DER, because he hasn't paid the installments, or they're coming for the furniture because something hasn't been paid for. Or else it was the car. Sometimes we had a car, sometimes we didn't.

My father never believed in saving for a rainy day. So when the coffers were full, he'd be throwing money around, buying my mother jewelry and fur coats, taking us to the Talk of the Town in Leicester Square for a slap-up meal and Judy Garland, but then I'd overhear them talking and he'd be saying things like, "Christ, Pads, ten grand. Where am I going to get that from?" And so the jewels would go down to the pawnshop, until eventually she learned to hide them where he couldn't find them.

It was as if my brother and I had two lives. There was the one at home, with the writs and the threats and the shouting on the phone. Then there was the street life, the park life, the skipping school and going to the cinema life. David would buy one ticket, and once inside he'd go straight to the emergency exit and let me in. We had it down to a fine art. It was an easy come, easy go kind of existence. We did what we wanted, and nobody seemed to care one way or the other.

When we were younger we'd go to Saturday matinees at the Ritzy — this was official, and our mum would give us the money. But when David decided it was too babyish for him, we moved on to dancing at the Locarno. We'd put on our best clothes — in my case a party dress and silver sandals — and take the bus up to Streatham. I couldn't have been more than ten, if that; officially you had to be older, but my brother was a practiced liar by then. I can't remember it being a problem. It was magical in there — everyone in their best and dancing under a spinning mirror ball, and I have loved mirror balls ever since. But it could also be a bit strange, dancing to something like "The Loco-motion" by Little Eva and thinking, I know her.

April 20, 2005, 10.00 a.m.
Doheny Road, Beverly Hills

A knock at my bedroom door.
"Sharon?"
"Yeseeee ..."
"Are you decent?"
"Of course not, Mikey. I make it a point to be positively indecent."

In steps Michael Guarracino, who has been with me fourteen years. He hesitates. I pull my dressing gown around me, and he blushes as if I had just flashed my tits. Michael is the straight man to my comic. He never says fuck or shit or arse or prick, or even willy, but then neither is he fazed by anything that happens here. Except possibly yesterday. Two days ago I had a colonic irrigation (don't even go there), and Ozzy was complaining to anybody who would listen how he'd been kept awake by my blasting away throughout the night. "Put it this way," he said, "if I'd have lit a match the whole of Beverly Hills would have gone up, and there were twenty-five dead pigeons on the balcony!" When it was Michael's turn to hear the story, he turned white.

"Are you telling me you've never heard your wife fart?" Ozzy said, his eyes wide in amazement. At which point Michael decided he had an urgent phone call to make and went out. Probably to be sick. He is the perfect antidote to my wilder side.

In his hand he's holding a pile of papers, e-mails and faxes and documents. Things he was working on yesterday, things that came in from London overnight. Things he wants me to read and sign and make decisions about. Things in all likelihood I don't feel like doing.

"So what delicious naughtiness have you for me this morning?" I say, shifting Minnie onto my lap.

He hands me a pile of papers half an inch thick. "Do you know what you want to do about this, Sharon?" I look at the top sheet.

Yes. I know what I want to do. I want to weep, weep, weep. It's a writ, or as Michael calls it, a claim. Same fucking thing. The Vagina Monologues. Monologues Ltd. is suing me for ?260,000. It comes as no surprise.

"So, Sharon, what do you want me to do about this?" "Throw it on the pile with the rest of them."

Outside the window the dogs are going crazy. It's Jennifer, come to take them for their morning walk.

"You want some of your special tea, Sharon?" Saba is from Sudan, and I swear she is graced with a sixth sense. I turn on the bath, take the most expensive bath oil I have. Pour it in. All of it. I light the most expensive candle I have on hand. Brand new, in its own special pot. Faaabulous. Burning money is about the only way I know to feel good about myself.

Excerpted from “Sharon Osbourne Extreme: The Autobiography,” by Sharon Osbourne. Copyright © 2006 by Sharon Osbourne. Excerpted by permission of Springboard Press, an imprint of Warner Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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