Fierce (19 page)

T
HE
night before the first episode of
The Osbournes
was due to air, me, Mum and Jack went for a walk with the dogs on Venice Beach in Santa Monica. My mum was really nervous and she said to us, ‘Why did we agree to do the show? People are going to think we’re so stupid.’

Jack and I agreed with her. We were all genuinely shitting ourselves and were convinced that we had made the biggest mistake of our lives.

The next night we all piled into my dad’s room, which we called The Bunker, to watch the first episode on MTV. It was where Dad did all his music, painting (my dad is a fucking good artist) and writing. There was me, Jack, Mum and Dad, a couple of executives from MTV, our nanny Melinda,
deep voice
Big Dave and everyone from Mum’s office.

And the theme music came on (a cover of one of my dad’s hits ‘Crazy Train’) ‘Crazy, but that’s how it goes …’ and straight away I had to put my hand over my face and just peer at the screen from behind the gaps between my fingers. I hated seeing myself on screen. I hated the way I looked. I hated my voice, my pink hair, the way I dressed – everything! The other surprise was that Jack and I were on screen a fucking lot! We had not expected it. Of course, we pissed ourselves laughing when they showed my dad going mental because he couldn’t use the remote control to the television. It was just typical of my dad, who was always shouting for Jack to come and help him work it out so he wouldn’t be forced to watch the weather channel all fucking day.

The half-hour episode went so quickly and at the end we all just breathed a sigh of relief that we’d got through it and had managed
not to look too ridiculous. We also thought hardly anyone would have watched it.

The next day, I was driving on my own along Sunset when I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw I was being followed by another car. It didn’t matter which side street I turned off on, the car was behind me. I just froze. My heart was pounding. I kept one hand on the wheel and with the other I scrambled in my bag on the front passenger seat for my mobile phone. I called Big Dave and blurted out in a panic, ‘Dave, someone’s following me. I’m so scared.’

I pulled into a parking space along Sunset while I waited for him to come and find me. He was only minutes away and was laughing his head off as he walked towards my car. As he peered his head into the window of my car, he said, ‘Kelly, they’re photographers.’ Wham! I thought, ‘Fuck, my life is never going to be the same again.’ But I couldn’t understand why they would want to take a picture of me. I really couldn’t.

The fame, if you can call it that, was instant. During the first week after the show had gone out, I would open the white shutters in my bedroom and see the whole street full of cars with paparazzi sitting inside with their cameras resting on their opened windows. Or they’d be huddled at the entrance of the gates, waiting to pounce whenever one of us drove out. They were there twenty-four hours a day.

The other freaky thing that started to happen was strangers would come and just hang outside our house. They were obviously fans of the show, but at the time it didn’t register with me. I just couldn’t get my head around why someone would want to sit on the pavement outside the house of a bunch of people they’d never met.

I wasn’t stupid. I was more than aware of what a fan was. I’d grown up with a father who had millions of them, but he’d been famous since he was nineteen and was a talented musician.

We’d let the cameras into our home for one night and all of a sudden people were camping outside.

I came down the stairs one afternoon and there were two girls standing in our hallway. So I smiled and said ‘hi’ and walked into the kitchen. My dad was standing at the sink looking out into the garden and I said, ‘Dad, who are those girls in our house?’

He turned around and said, ‘Aren’t they mates of yours, Kelly? They rang the buzzer on the gate so I let them in.’

I replied, ‘No, Dad. I’ve never fucking seen them before in my life.’

They were complete strangers who’d just watched the show and rocked up outside. I was bent double pissing myself laughing. My dad shot past me and started shouting, ‘What the fuck are you doing in my house? Get out of my house.’

It was the funniest thing ever!

A
FTER
the show, Jack and I would walk into a shop and everyone would just stop what they were doing and stare at us like we were aliens or something. Los Angeles is full of A-list celebrities, so we thought it was so strange that people would give a shit about two teenagers. I found the whole thing really confusing.

Jack and I were already known at places like The Roxy and The Standard Hotel, but all of a sudden we didn’t have to queue up outside. We’d always been able to walk straight into On The Rox but we never
got preferential treatment at the other clubs. Sometimes we didn’t even get in.

But that first time we went out after the first episode had aired was so surreal. As we walked up to The Roxy, the guys on the door just ushered us to the front and we went straight in. Now, I’m not going to lie; not having to queue up was the coolest thing ever and, yeah, we fucking loved it. Who wouldn’t? Once we were inside, Jack just turned to me and said, ‘What the fuck? Did that just happen?’

But it did start to freak us out after a while. When people are being so kind to you all the time, you do wonder what they want.

Quite possibly the most random thing that happened was that people started offering me cocaine. I’d be out and some random guy would come straight over to me and say, ‘Do you want to buy some coke?’ Or they would give me their card and say, ‘If you ever want to score any drugs, give me a call.’ I was seventeen. These dealers obviously thought that if you were famous and you have money, you could become an addict and then make them lots of money. It was quite unbelievable. Of course I wasn’t naïve about drugs – I was regularly taking painkillers, for fuck’s sake – but I didn’t associate that kind of addiction to cocaine use at that point.

I wasn’t naïve either to the fact that people offered drugs, but it was usually less blatant and mostly when they had taken something themselves and wanted to share. These guys were stone-cold sober and on a mission to find new customers. I would always say no and walk away. I had grown up with a father who took drugs, but that didn’t mean that I had thought about taking cocaine myself. Now that
I was famous, did people really think I would be interested?

The first time anyone asked for my autograph was just crazy. Had I practised before? Had I fuck! My father was due at an album signing at a record store on Sunset and me, Melinda, Big Dave and my uncle Tony had gone ahead of my mum and dad who were arriving in a black stretch limousine, much to my dad’s annoyance because he hates them.

There was a roped-off area in front of a curtain partially dividing the fans lining the streets in front of the red carpet. We were all standing behind the curtain waiting for my dad to arrive. I popped my head around the curtain to see if my dad was there and someone shouted, ‘Kelly! It’s Kelly Osbourne.’

And then the entire crowd started chanting, ‘Kelly! Kelly! Kelly!’

Hearing my name was just so weird. Our nanny, Melinda, pushed me forward to have my picture taken and sign autographs. My whole body was squirming with embarrassment. People started touching me and grabbing my coat. It was one of the oddest experiences of my life.

W
E
were asked to do some really crazy shit during the first series of
The Osbournes
. Here’s an indication of what everyone thought of me: I was approached to do anything associated with being fat or weight loss. Production companies wanted me to stop eating, continue eating, interview fat people, thin people, visit the fattest cities in America – all kinds of shit. I didn’t want to do any of them. But hey, I’d got the message: everyone thought I was fat.

The best request that came through was one that Jack got. He was asked to go into the jungle and purposely get bitten by all the most
poisonous snakes and spiders in the world to see what it felt like. But he didn’t need to worry because the production company was going to give him an antidote to take straight after so he wouldn’t die. That’s if it worked, of course. I’m not being funny, but why the fuck would he want to do that? Go out and try and get killed, oh and just for the fun of it, invite a TV crew along as well. Idiots!

T
HERE
were so many things that made me proud of the show. Amongst all the craziness I wanted people to see we were a real family with the same family values as everyone else. Before that show, everyone thought my father lived in some fucking bat cave. Nothing made me prouder than when my father finally got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles. It had been set up way before the show, but because we were now being followed by the MTV crew, they came too.

The Hollywood Walk of Fame is a tribute to stars past and present and it’s such a big honour to have your name on a star embedded in the sidewalk. Destiny’s Child, Matt Damon, Whoopi Goldberg. Frank Sinatra … it’s a really big deal. My mum had been trying for ages to get my dad on the Hollywood Walk of Fame because he deserved it. When it comes to music, he created a whole genre of music with Black Sabbath and again when he went solo. So many people look to him for inspiration. One morning my mum finally got a letter in the post to say that my dad would be getting a star. I was so fucking proud, I can’t tell you.

But there was a problem; my mum wanted us to keep it a secret from him as long as possible. He had been invited to unveil his star
(every star has to be there at the unveiling or they don’t get one – unless they’re dead) on 12 April 2002. In the end he was the only person who didn’t know and it was killing us not to tell him. About three weeks before, my mum took him into the kitchen and we all waited outside and she said, ‘Ozzy, you’re going to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.’

He said, ‘Are you kidding, Sharon?’

We all burst in and my mum was squealing, ‘No, Daddy (it’s what she always calls my dad.) I’m not joking.’

We were all jumping around him – it was brilliant.

When the day arrived it was bloody stressful because we were all so nervous for him. My half-brother and -sister Louis and Jessica had flown over and there was my mum, me, Jack, Aimee, Uncle Tony, Melinda and Lynn Seager, who has been my mum’s best friend for ever and runs her management company in the UK. We all had to be there for 11.30 a.m. As we pulled into Hollywood Boulevard there were literally thousands of people waiting on the pavement to see my dad. I had goose bumps all over my body as we stepped out of the car. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more proud in my whole life.

My father stepped out and said, ‘This is just so overwhelming with all of you turning out so early in the morning to see my old butt.’ It was an amazing day.