Fierce (15 page)

I was angry, upset and I’d had enough. He came towards me, but his security guard pulled him back and my mum grabbed a wooden
candlestick and went to hit him over the head with it. When my mum told him what had happened the next day when he’d sobered up he cried. He cried for two days. He just couldn’t believe what had happened. He couldn’t remember it.

I love my dad more than anything. Now, more than ever, I understand how hard it is to fight an addiction. I don’t blame him or hate him. I feel sad it happened. I thought my dad was going to die all the time from drink and drugs. I still have that fear, even though he has been clean since 2003. But I’m so proud of him. He did it – it’s not easy, but he did it – and although every day is a struggle for him, he’s stayed clean.

G
ROWING
up with an alcoholic wasn’t enough to stop me wanting to try alcohol when I was thirteen. It was around this time that I got drunk for the first time. We were on holiday in Hawaii. We always used to go there when we moved to America. We were away with another family, and one of their kids had got hold of a bottle of vodka. We told our parents we were going swimming and left the hotel. In another resort nearby we sat in a circle on the beach and starting drinking. I felt so grown up and cool. Apart from the odd sip of champagne at Christmas when I’d usually spit it out, I’d never tasted alcohol and I was intrigued. I’m not joking. Jack, who was only twelve, gave me the equivalent of two tablespoons of vodka in a small glass – and I was pissed out of my head! I whispered
to Jack that I didn’t feel well and he had to help me to bed. There would be many similar scenarios to come. I was the older sister and I was meant to be the one looking out for him. The whole time he was saying, ‘Don’t worry, Kelly, you’re just feeling a little bit drunk. You’ll feel OK once you’ve slept it off.’ I couldn’t believe that my little brother was teaching me what being drunk was all about. We were sharing a bedroom, so he put me to bed and sat on the floor next to my bed until I started to feel a bit better. The next day I felt like shit. I suppose it was my first-ever hangover. It’s a bit embarrassing really, bearing in mind how much I’d drunk.

I worried about my father and knew what alcohol could do, but I didn’t associate it with my own experimentation. Put it this way, witnessing my father’s battles with alcohol was not enough to stop me experimenting, which is what a lot of young people are doing. They’re experimenting.

When we moved to America, all the kids at school would have parties in their parents’ mansions in Beverly Hills. I would get a text on my phone on a weekend saying ‘house party’ with the address and we would all drive over.

In California, you can get your provisional driving licence when you’re fifteen and a half. That means you can drive a car with a licence holder for six months before taking your test when you’re sixteen.

Uncle Tony used to take me out all the time around LA so I could practise. At the time, my dad had a crazy Irish security guard who was ace. He took me out for my first-ever lesson. I was sitting in the driving seat and gripping the wheel – I was absolutely shitting myself.
Meanwhile, he was jabbering away next to me about how people shouldn’t need to use electric toothbrushes, but should instead brush their teeth themselves.

I was muttering to myself, ‘Electric toothbrushes? Hmm, do they have something to do with driving a car?’

I passed the test first time. Mum and Dad bought me a black Chrysler PT Cruiser with flames. Whenever there was a party, I’d pick up Molly and Tali and we’d head over. Everyone at school got shit cars – especially the girls. They all wanted to look like the ‘booty girls’ who appeared in rap videos and hung out in big fuck-off convertibles. They’d all be driving these massive cars – they looked ridiculous.

I hated going to ‘school parties’. It was the same time and time again. The party was always at some massive house, usually the parents were away and the police would always be called because the neighbours had complained about the noise or something. They’d walk in and I’d be standing thinking, ‘I really hate this. I really don’t want to be here.’

There was always alcohol there, but I never used to drink. I never felt under pressure to drink at those parties anyway. I didn’t want to be the person puking in the corner who everyone would be talking about at school on the Monday. No way! Someone would always bring a keg of beer and all the guys would be drinking that. Meanwhile, all the girls would be sipping on some gross peach schnapps. It all felt so juvenile.

The girls were usually blonde and they’d all be wearing UGG boots, Juicy Couture tracksuits, and popping chewing gum and saying,
‘Oh my God.’ Sad-arsed motherfuckers! And the guys; they’d swagger into the party and I’d be thinking: ‘Just because you have the Michael Jordan jersey on and you’ve stolen your dad’s expensive watch doesn’t make you look cool. And you’re talking like you’re black when you couldn’t be more white. In fact you’re practically albino. You’re not hot!’

I absolutely hated what those parties represented. I really did. They were so gossipy and the people who were there actually cared about who was snogging who – who gave a shit? I didn’t.

O
N
Sunset in West Hollywood there’s a hotel called The Hyatt, but it’s nicknamed The Riot House. Back in the seventies and eighties, all these rock bands used to stay in it and completely trash it. Just up the road is another hotel called The Sunset Marquis. It’s the hotel where lots of musicians and bands hang out. They used to trash their rooms at that hotel too. They did it because they thought it made them cool; it didn’t.

Before we moved into
The Osbournes’
house on Doheny Road, we stayed at The Sunset Marquis. There was the main hotel and then there were individual apartments. We were in one of the apartments that was in the middle of grounds full of flowers and cut grass – it was really nice. My bedroom stunk of mothballs though, which was a bit weird because otherwise it was a really nice place.

There was a recording studio in the hotel, which is why it was so
popular with musicians, and there was this really cool bar called The Whiskey Bar. My father had been staying at that hotel with my mum since the early Black Sabbath days.

While we were living there I would go down to The Whiskey Bar in my pyjamas – they were like the ones Ally McBeal wore on the television show. I’d sneak out and climb down the balcony without my parents knowing.

The manager used to let me sit behind the bar and clean the glasses for him. There was a massive black-and-white picture of my dad on one of the walls. It was only a small bar, but loads of people used to hang out there. It had a really nice atmosphere and the bar used to run across the entire room on the back wall opposite the entrance. I’d be sitting there in my pyjamas chatting to all the musicians. Noel and Liam Gallagher sat there when I was behind the bar a few times. They were cool and chatted to me. Another night Eminem came in and Slash from Guns N’ Roses. It was a laugh. The barmen, who became my friends, would be passing me glasses of pineapple juice, but my parents didn’t know they were putting in shots of Malibu. It was the first time that I drank socially.

It wasn’t long before we started filming
The Osbournes
and Jack and I really hated going to school. We just didn’t want to go. We were always hanging off the balcony of our whitewashed apartment in the morning chucking stuff off and saying, ‘We’re not going to school.’

The Welsh actor Rhys Ifans was staying in the hotel at the time because he was filming the movie
Little Nicky
. He used to piss himself laughing at us when he walked past to go to the studio.
He thought we were mad, out-of-control kids! On his days off from filming, he used to come and hang out with us. Rhys is a really cool and funny guy. Years later we became good friends when I moved to London and we would hang out together with Kate Moss and Davinia Taylor.

W
HEN
I was fourteen, I started going to a club called On The Rox. It was above The Roxy, which is a famous club on Sunset. Loads of people would hang out there but, basically, it was a room above the club where the owners would hang out. My parents knew them really well – they used to go there when they were younger. Even though you had to be twenty-one to get in we didn’t have any problems because my mum knew everyone there. Her theory was that if she let us go out, at least she knew where we were and that we were going to be safe.

I swear to God my mum had spies on us when we were there because when I’d get home she’d know exactly who I’d spoken to and what I’d drunk. I’d walk in at midnight and she’d say, ‘Kelly, you’ve been drinking.’

I’d say, ‘I’ve not had a drop.’

But she would come back with, ‘I know you’ve had two Malibu pineapples.’ I couldn’t get away with anything.

The great thing about On The Rox – especially after
The Osbournes
show started and we would get bothered all the time – was that it was up to the owners who got in. Sometimes there would be 300 people queuing to get in, but there would only be five people inside. I used
to hang out with Jack there and my friends Molly and Tali. One time when Sammy and Fleur were visiting from the UK, I took them there. Sammy got so drunk she thought she was a sheep! A fucking sheep! She had one of those denim jackets on that had sheep’s wool on the inside and it kind of fucked with her head because she’d drunk so much. That was one of the funniest nights I ever spent there.

On The Rox was really cool – it had lots of secret rooms. Rumour has it that the legendary Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss used to entertain some of her men in those rooms. Who knows, but it’s a fucking good tale to tell.

I always used to drink Malibu pineapple then. It was my favourite drink. One night I drank seven. One minute I was sitting there laughing with everyone, the next the room was spinning. And I mean really spinning. You know that ride you can go on at the fair where you all stand with your back against a wall and the floor moves and the pressure keeps you sucked to the wall, but your head feels heavy? Well, that’s exactly how I felt. My head felt so fucking heavy. Every time I put it up it felt like I was going to fall over. I felt so ill. Fortunately, Doctor Jack came to the rescue. My little brother Jack is an expert on everything. As soon as he’s read a paragraph on anything he becomes man-in-the-know. I turned to him and said, ‘Jack, the room is spinning. I don’t feel very well.’

In the taxi on the way home with me lolloping all over the back seat, he told me he suspected I had alcohol poisoning. It was totally the wrong thing to say to me because straight away I thought I was going to die. I was screaming out, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die of
alcohol poisoning.’ He was just sitting there stroking my arm.