Fierce (5 page)

I
REALISED
that my family was slightly different when I started school. The penny most definitely started to drop when I saw the other dads who sometimes came to pick up their sons and daughters. They would be standing there in their smart suits. My dad had a different job. He was somewhere in the world performing to an arena of thousands.

I met Sammy on my first day at Gateway School when I was four. It didn’t look like a school when I drove up with my mum. It looked more like someone’s grand house. It was painted white with two chimneys on the top.

I started to cry as soon as we stepped out of the car. As my mum pulled me along by my hand, I noticed another little girl in the same grey-and-red uniform. She was also crying and standing with her mum. I walked over to her and said, ‘Hi. My name is Kelly.’ We became
best friends for life from that day on. Sammy was the same height as me and we had the same curly blonde hair. Back then, that seemed to be more than enough to become best friends with someone. In the classroom, I sat next to her at a little square table and said, ‘You’ve got the same hair as me. Let’s be best friends.’

But there was so much more to mine and Sammy’s friendship than our hair. She was the only person who never made fun of me and never questioned anything my parents did. She never said anything. Sometimes the other kids would go, ‘There is Ozzy’s daughter. He bit the head off a dove.’ They must have heard that from their parents. How would they have known that shit? But Sammy would just tell me to ignore them. I loved her for that.

I had this great big, massive fringe. Sammy says to me now, ‘Kel, do you remember that great big fringe you had?’ And then pisses herself laughing.

I’ve always been outspoken. During those first few weeks at school, I was constantly getting into trouble because I didn’t know what was a grown-up thing to say and what was a child thing to say. In our house we were allowed to talk about whatever we wanted to. If we ever had a question, we would go to my mum and she would tell us. Just like the time when I’d heard girls at school talking about this thing called ‘sex’. I thought, I’ll speak to Mum and find out what it’s all about.

I went to school the next day and told everyone in my class what sex was. I announced to everyone, ‘Your dads stick their willies into your mothers’ vaginas.’ All this sex talk went flying around the school and
the teachers were trying to find out who it was who had started it. All hell broke loose.

And then they realised it was me. I was called into the Head’s office and he said, ‘Kelly, was it you who spread those rumours?’

I replied, ‘I told everyone what sex was.’

I had to sit on a red chair outside the Head’s office every day for a week. When I told my mum, she laughed. She knew she hadn’t told me anything wrong. I was always free to express myself the way that I wanted to, not the way people thought I should. It was only when I wasn’t with my family and at school with the other kids that I realised it wasn’t the right way to talk.

Sammy’s family was very different to mine. Her mum owned a hair salon and her dad was, and is, the best butcher in Buckinghamshire. Whenever I went to her house for Sunday lunch or breakfast we would have the best sausages. I absolutely loved it.

Sammy’s mum used to make us go for a hike every Sunday! She was very organised and always on time. She is a tiny woman and her shoes would always clip-clop on the cobbles. She was forever bollocking my mum for being late to pick me up from school. Sammy would refuse to leave me with the teachers and would insist on waiting, so her mum had to wait too.

I can still remember her parents’ home number off the top of my head today – I was always bloody ringing it. I was on the phone to her the whole time. One afternoon, Sammy and I set up the video camera in her living room and recorded a whole dance routine we’d made up to the Madonna song ‘Papa Don’t Preach’. Sammy was quiet and laid-back.

My other good friend was Fleur Newman. Her dad and mum, Colin and Mette, were my mum and dad’s best friends. Colin is also their accountant and business partner. They first met when Colin worked for my mum’s dad. I have known Fleur since the day I was born. Mette brought Mum McDonald’s while she was in hospital. As they sat eating their chips, Mette laid Fleur next to me in the cot. Fleur knows my life inside out and backwards because of our parents’ friendship. She was born to like me. She knows more about how my family works than any of my friends.

Fleur is one of the funniest people I have ever met in my life. She is very set in her ways. You can’t mess with Fleur. What I really respect about her is when she says no, she means no. You really can’t persuade her. No is no with Fleur. She went to a school in London, but I introduced her to Sammy and we were a great team. She’s more like a cousin actually. I can’t remember spending a summer or Christmas without her. There are very few people that I trust, but I would tell Fleur anything knowing that she wouldn’t tell anyone.

The great thing about Fleur is she sees me as the Kelly who she knew when we were growing up. Around the time that
The Osbournes
started we had come over to London. I’d gone out in Camden, north London, to a bar with Fleur and Sammy. I was stood getting the drinks when this girl came over and said, ‘You’re Kelly Osbourne and you’re fat and ugly. Isn’t it a shame you can’t be as attractive as your mother?’ I thought, ‘What the fuck?’ So I pushed her and we got into a scuffle. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that her friends had started on Sammy and Fleur and one girl was pulling their hair.

I was so pissed off I went marching over and began pushing them off. I felt so bad that they were being attacked because of me.

The story ended up in one of the papers, so Fleur cut it out and framed it. From that day on she has cut out and framed every single embarrassing story and picture of me and hung it on the wall behind her drinks bar at home. That’s been one way of keeping my feet on the ground.

When you’re in the public eye there are so many fake friends out there. It’s so easy to spot them. When I suspect that someone doesn’t really want to be my friend but likes the idea of knowing a celebrity, I always ask them to do something for me that I would never ask anyone
to do for me. And if they do it and don’t turn around and say, ‘What the fuck are you asking me to do?’ I know that they’re a fake. You know, like I’ll ask them to pass me my drink even though it’s just three inches away from my hand. It’s sick that you even have to ask people to do that. But with Sammy it really was very different. She didn’t have to be my friend, but she chose to be.

During school time, my life was pretty much the same as everyone else’s in my class. When my dad was home from touring, I was sometimes very reluctant to bring my friends home after school. I wasn’t always sure what state my dad would be in and I didn’t want to be embarrassed.

When we broke up for the summer holidays, I knew that I would be going off to do something completely different from my friends. My mum didn’t like us spending too much time away from Dad so, whenever we could, we would always go and join him on the road. It meant we got to fly all over the world to places like America, Japan and Europe. We were bloody lucky.

We would stay with my mum and dad on the tour bus. We had our own little beds and we’d drive from city to city. It was fantastic fun. I sent Sammy and Fleur postcards from all the different places that we used to visit.

When we were with my father on tour he would take us on to the stage during one of his songs and the crowd would go absolutely mental. He would be holding Jack in his arms and I would be holding on to one of his legs and Aimee would be clutching the other. Mum would be smiling proudly from the side of the stage.

On a couple of the tours, the heavy-metal band Mötley Crüe would be supporting my dad. When my dad was due on stage, everyone who was with us went to be with him. So the guys from Mötley Crüe would come and babysit us on the tour bus. I suppose they weren’t your conventional babysitters. But they were bloody cool.

I was lucky because I had Fleur with me on some of those trips, but being away from your friends during the school holidays is always a bit weird. Going back to school after those trips was always a bit strange for me. I’d had such a different summer holiday to all my other friends. I’d tell them what I’d been up to and my good friends thought it was cool. I’m sure some felt a little jealous, but at that age they didn’t show it too much. When you’re a kid you just want to be like all your friends. So even being picked out as being Ozzy Osbourne’s daughter was a big fucking deal. No one else in my class was Ozzy Osbourne’s daughter. But it was when I got older that the more hurtful bullying started.