‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘Let’s do it.’
So he gave me this kit to get my arse ready for its close-up. It was basically four bottles of liquid, and you had to drink a couple of them in the afternoon, shit through the eye of a needle, rinse yourself out, drink the next two, shit through the needle again, then not eat anything for twenty-four hours. You could have seen daylight through my arse by the end of it, it was so clean. Then I went back to the doc’s for the test.
First he got me to lie on this table and put my knees up to my chest. ‘Right,’ he says, ‘I’m going to put you under with some Demerol. Then I’m going to insert this camera up your rectal passage. Don’t worry: you won’t feel a thing. And I’ll record everything on a DVD, so you can watch it yourself at your leisure.’
‘OK.’
So he jabs me with a needle, and while I’m waiting to pass out I notice this massive flat-screen TV to the side of me. Then, all of a sudden, I feel something the size of a small house go up my arse. I yelp and close my eyes, and when I open them again, the TV screen is showing a high-definition image of a big red cave.
‘Is that the inside of my arsehole?’ I ask.
‘Why the hell aren’t you asleep?’ says the doc.
‘Dunno.’
‘Don’t you feel groggy?’
‘Not really.’
‘Not even a little bit?’
‘Nope.’
‘I’m going to give you some more Demerol then.’
‘Whatever it takes, Doc.’
So he gives me another shot of the good stuff. Ahhh. Two minutes later, he says, ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Fine, thanks,’ I say, still glued to Journey to the Centre of my Arse on the TV screen.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he says. ‘You’re still awake? I’m going to give you some more.’
‘Go on then.’
Another couple of minutes go by.
‘How about now, Mr Osbourne? Blink if you can hear me?’
‘Blink? Why can’t I just tell you?’
‘That’s impossible! You’re not human!’
‘How can I fall asleep during this?’ I say. ‘Any minute now you’re going to find some long-lost cufflinks up there, or maybe an old watch, or a pair of Sharon’s tights.’
‘I can’t have you awake right now. I’m going to give you one last sh—’
Black.
When it was over, the doc told me he’d found a couple of abnormal growths up my arsehole – polyps, they’re called – and he needed to send them away for testing. Nothing much to worry about, he said. And he was right, ’cos when the results came back, everything was fine.
But then I convinced myself that Sharon also needed to get a colonoscopy – ’cos she never went for regular check-ups. In the end I nagged her so much that she finally agreed to go before flying off to New York with the kids to do some filming. She was still there when the results came back. This time, they weren’t good: the lab had found ‘cancerous tumours’. But as devastating as that news was, the way we found out was fucking unbelievable. The woman from the doctor’s surgery just called Sharon’s work number in LA and left a voicemail. It should have been me who broke the news to her, in person. Instead she found out when some chick from the office called up with her list of end-of-day messages: ‘Oh, by the way, are you sitting down for this? You’ve got cancer.’
The first thing Sharon did was call me.
‘Ozzy, please don’t freak out,’ she said. ‘I’m coming home tonight and going into hospital tomorrow.’
Stunned silence.
‘Ozzy, it’s gonna be OK. Stop freaking out.’
‘I’m not freaking out.’
As soon as she hung up, I was literally on the floor, howling. When I was growing up, no one ever recovered from cancer. I mean, the doc would always tell you it was survivable, but everyone knew that was just bullshit to calm you down.
But I had to pull myself together before Sharon’s plane landed in LA. So I showered, put on the brand of aftershave that Sharon loved, and got dressed up in a black evening suit with a white silk scarf. I wanted to look as good as possible for my wife.
Then off I went to the airport. When Sharon finally stepped off the plane with the kids and the dogs, we all hugged and cried on the tarmac. As much as I was trying to put a brave face on things, I was a fucking wreck. I’d been bad enough before the cancer scare, but this had pushed me into an abyss. My doctors were working overtime, upping my dosage of this, that and the other. My head felt like it was floating three feet above my shoulders.
‘I’m going to deal with this,’ was the first thing Sharon said to me.
Then we went back home, and the crew from MTV were waiting. They said, ‘Look, it’s OK if you want us all to go home now. Just let us know. It’s your decision.’
But Sharon wouldn’t have any of it.
‘This is reality TV,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t get any more fucking real than this. Keep your cameras rolling.’
I thought it was very courageous of her to say that. But that’s my wife for you. Tougher than tough.
Looking back now, I had a full-on nervous breakdown in July 2002, which was made ten times worse by all the shit I was putting down my neck, twenty-four hours a day. It’s not enough to say that I love Sharon. I owe my life to Sharon. The thought of losing her was unbearable. But I never gave up. When something heavy like that happens, you get this force field around you, and things that would normally rattle your cage just don’t mean anything any more. It’s hard to describe – I just went to this other place in my head.
Sharon’s operation was on July 3, 2002. When it was done, and the cancer had been removed, the doctor said that she’d make a full recovery. But while they were digging around up there, they took out a couple of lymph nodes for testing. Days later, the lab confirmed that the cancer had spread into her lymph nodes. Which meant the worst wasn’t over – not by a long shot. I didn’t know it at the time, but Sharon’s chances of survival were only about 33 per cent. All I knew was that she’d have to go through months of horrific chemotherapy.
They were the darkest, most miserable, terrible, fucked-up days of my life. And I can’t even begin to imagine how bad it must have been for Sharon. Almost immediately, her hair started to fall out, so she had to get hairpieces made. And every time she got zapped by the chemo, she’d come home so badly dehydrated – because of all the vomiting – that she’d have a seizure. What would happen is, the first day she got back from the hospital she’d be wired, the second day she’d be all spaced out, and the third day she’d go into a seizure. And the seizures got worse every time.
One evening I went out for dinner with the kids, and when we got back, Sharon was worse than I’d ever seen her before: instead of just having one seizure, she was having them one after the other. It was fucking terrifying. There was no way we could wait for an ambulance, so I ran into Fort Apache, and shouted at the MTV guys, ‘Get us one of your trucks. We need to drive Sharon to the emergency room, right now, because if we wait for an ambulance, it’s gonna be too late.’ Then I then ran back to the bedroom, picked up Sharon from the bed, and carried her down the stairs and out to the drive-way.
The guys had a truck waiting by the time we got outside. Two of the crew members sat up front while I climbed into the back with Sharon. We’d strapped her to this gurney, but she was bouncing off the fucking thing like you wouldn’t believe. It was wild, like something out of The Exorcist. The spasms were so intense it was like she was levitating. Then, when we got to the hospital – it took us three minutes – all these nurses were running around, screaming. It was a terrible scene, the worst vibe you can possibly imagine.
After that, I got a team of nurses to live with us at Doheny Road, ’cos I never wanted Sharon to go through that again. I also got my agent to call Robin Williams to ask him if he would come over and cheer up Sharon. I’ve always believed that if you can get someone to laugh when they’re sick, it’s the best
way of helping them to get better – and I got the feeling that Robin felt the same way after seeing that movie he did, Patch Adams. So he came over one day when I’d gone off to the studio, and apparently Sharon was crying with laughter the whole afternoon. To this day I think that’s the greatest gift I’ve ever given my wife, and I’m for ever in Robin’s debt for it. I mean, ‘thanks’ is nowhere near enough, is it? The guy is just a really wonderful human being. But in spite of Robin’s comedy show, Sharon had another seizure that night and she ended up in hospital again.
I got terribly paranoid whenever Sharon was in hospital. One stray germ, I thought, and she could get an infection and die. At first, I ordered the kids to wear face masks and gloves whenever they were around her. But then they’d bring the dogs, which drove me crazy. In fact, Sharon’s dog Minnie didn’t leave her side for one second during the chemo. I never saw that dog eat. I never saw it piss. By the end of the treatment, the dog was as dehydrated as Sharon was. One time I went to the hospital and they were both lying there, side by side, with matching drips. Minnie was like a guardian angel for Sharon. But she didn’t like me one bit. In fact, she didn’t like men, full stop. Even when she was on her last legs, that dog would always find the energy to growl at me. The last thing Minnie ever did was give me one of her withering looks, as if to say, ‘Urgh.’
I suffered physically during Sharon’s illness, too, but in my case it was self-inflicted. I’d drink a case of beer in the morning, smoke a shitload of dope at lunchtime, try to wake myself up again with speed, then go jogging. At least it dimmed the reality of the situation, but by the end I was a fucked-up shell of a human being. Then, one day, Sharon said to me, ‘For God’s sake, Ozzy, go and do some gigs. You’re driving everyone crazy.’
So that’s what I did. I’d already missed a few Ozzfest dates by then, but I rejoined the tour on August 22 in Denver. I was so uptight, I wouldn’t let anyone talk about cancer. If I heard the c-word, I freaked out. But a few nights later, when we were in another city – don’t ask me where – I was halfway through the set and I just thought, Fuck this, I can’t keep denying that this is happening. So I said to the crowd, ‘I want to tell you about Sharon’s progress. She’s doing well, and she’s going to beat this cancer. She’s going to kick it up the fucking arse!’
The crowd went mental. I swear to God, they lifted me up. It was magical. The power of people, when they focus on something positive, never fails to amaze me. A few days after that I went to see my physiotherapist about some back problems I’d been having. ‘There’s something I want to tell you,’ he said. ‘I can see by the look on your face that you’re terrified, but I want you to know that ten years ago I had what your wife’s got. And I made a full recovery.’
‘You survived the chemo?’ I said.
‘I didn’t even have chemo,’ he said.
It was the first truly positive thing I’d heard from anyone about Sharon’s illness. Or at least the first time I’d listened to anything positive. In my mind, cancer equalled death. And I think a lot of other people thought the same way I did. They’d say to me, ‘I’m so sorry to hear about Sharon,’ without even looking at me, like they knew she was dying. But this guy was different, and he changed my attitude right there and then.
And he was right: when the chemo was over, Sharon’s cancer seemed to have been completely destroyed.
I remember going to the hospital, and one of the doctors telling me, ‘Just so you understand, your wife’s going to spend as much time getting over the chemo as she did getting over the cancer.’
I said, ‘Let me tell you something about my wife. The second you give her the all-clear, she’ll be off and running – and you won’t be able to stop her.’
‘I don’t want to argue, Mr Osbourne,’ he said, ‘but, believe me, she’s not going to be able to do very much.’
A week later, she got the all-clear.
And you couldn’t see her for dust.
*
When we started to film The Osbournes, Sharon hadn’t spoken to her father for almost twenty years. It was terribly sad, because I knew that deep down, somewhere, she loved the guy. But after everything he’d done, she’d pretty much given up on him. She’d even told the kids that their grand-father had died during the war – although it didn’t take long for them to find out the real story. I remember the day it happened, in fact: we were all in the car together, driving through Beverly Hills, when Sharon suddenly hit the brakes, made an illegal U-turn, and pulled up outside Nate ’n Al’s delicatessen.
Before anyone could ask her what the fuck she was doing, she was leaning out of the window and screaming, ‘You fucking arsehole! YOU FUCKING ARSEHOLE!’
Then I saw Don standing there on the street. He immediately started to shout back. The last thing I remember is him coming right up to the car window, until he was only inches from Sharon’s face, and calling her a ‘fucking whore’. Then Sharon put her foot down and sped off, leaving him coughing and spluttering in a cloud of black smoke from the tires.
Meanwhile, inside the car, there was just this stunned silence. I had no fucking idea how to explain what had just happened to the kids. Then Aimee’s little voice piped up from the back seat.
‘Mum, why did Tony Curtis call you a whore?’
‘BECAUSE TONY CURTIS IS A FUCKING ARSE-HOLE,’ came the reply.
To this day, I have no idea why Aimee thought Don was Tony Curtis. Maybe that’s what Sharon had told her, or maybe she’d seen Tony Curtis on telly – at the time he was a dead-ringer for Don. But it didn’t matter, ’cos that’s when Sharon told the kids everything.
It wasn’t the only time we bumped into Don in LA. On another occasion we’d been to see a movie at the Century City shopping mall, and we were waiting for our car at the valet stand. All of a sudden, I spotted Don behind Sharon.
‘Promise me you won’t go nuts,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘Just promise me.’
‘OK, I promise.’
‘Your father’s standing right behind you.’
The moment I said it, one of the valet guys turned up with our car. Thank God for that, I thought.
‘Get in the car,’ barked Sharon.
‘You’re not gonna do anything crazy, are you?’ I said to her.
‘No.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘GET IN THE FUCKING CAR.’
I got in the passenger side and closed the door. Sharon climbed into the driver’s seat. Then she turned into this Satan woman. She floored the accelerator, mounted the kerb, and drove straight at her father. He had to dive into a hedge to get out of the way. She almost killed him – with about fifty people standing around as witnesses. It was terrifying.
After that we didn’t see or hear from Don for years. Then, at the end of the nineties, Sharon’s mother died. I don’t know all the ins-and-outs of it, but Sharon’s mum had taken a few funny turns over the years, and the upshot was that the two of them had stopped talking, too. They’re a very intense family, the Ardens. They’ve always gone in for a lot of verbal abuse – which sometimes I think can be even worse than physical abuse. Anyway, a year or so after her mother died, we heard from the family in England that Don was sick and had fallen on hard times. Even though they still weren’t talking, Sharon sorted him out with a place to live. Then I got a call from Sharon’s brother, David. ‘I’ve got some bad news,’ he said. ‘Don’s got Alzheimer’s.’
There was no way I could keep that from Sharon.
At first she brushed it off, and said she was supporting him financially anyway. But I said to her, ‘Look, I don’t know what your real feelings are towards your father, but I strongly advise you, if you’ve got anything to say to him, even if it’s just to call him an arsehole again, do it now. Because with every day that goes by, he’s gonna be like a dying flame.’
The thing is, I’ve never believed in feuds. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve been angry with people. Very angry – with people like Pat
rick Meehan, or that lawyer who tried to bill me for a drink, or Bob Daisley. But I don’t hate them. And I don’t wish them any harm. I reckon hating someone is just a total fucking waste of time and effort. What do you get out of it in the end? Nothing. I’m not trying to come over like the Archangel Gabriel here. I just think that if you’re pissed off with someone, call them an arsehole, get it out of your system, and move on. It’s not like we’re on this earth very long.
Anyway, Sharon finally decided she wanted to see him again, so he came back into our lives. He even ended up in a couple of episodes of The Osbournes. And I was happy about it, y’know – even though he’d called me Vegetable for most of the time I knew him. Then, when Sharon decided she wanted to renew our wedding vows – she was still going through chemo at the time – we made Don part of the ceremony, which we held on New Year’s Eve at the Beverly Hills Hotel. We did it Jewish-style – with the little canopy, the broken glass, everything.
A lot of people came up to me that night and asked, ‘How come you and Sharon have stayed together all this time?’ My answer was the same then as it is now: I’ve never stopped telling my wife that I love her; I’ve never stopped taking her out for dinner; I’ve never stopped surprising her with little gifts. Unfortunately, back then, I’d never stopped drinking and taking drugs, either, so the ceremony ended much the same as our original wedding had: with me slumped in a corridor, pissed out of my brains.
The Don Arden I’d known since the early seventies just disappeared after that. The light was on but no one was home. It was a terrible way to die. I’m telling you, having seen what happened to my father-in-law, I wouldn’t wish Alzheimer’s on my worst fucking enemy. Even after everything that had gone down between us over the years – even though he’d played a part in Bob Daisley’s lawsuit – I felt truly sorry for him during his final years.
In the end, we put him in a care home.
I remember he had this wax build-up in his ears, and whenever we went to see him, I used to put these drops in for him. I don’t know why I thought it was my job, I just did it. I suppose it probably had something to do with the immense pity I felt for him. This vicious, powerful, frightening man had become a child.