I Am Ozzy (35 page)

Not everyone loved
The Osbournes
Bill Cosby, for example.
He got a right old bee up his arse about it.
I suppose he got offended 'cos the press kept comparing our show to his: one of the newspapers even

said I was 'America's New Favourite Dad'. So he wrote us a letter. It was along the lines of 'I saw you on the telly, and your foul language sets a bad example.'
Fair enough, I thought.
But, y'know, swearing is just part of who we are - we're forever effing and blinding. And the whole point of
The Osbournes
was to be real. But I have to say I always thought that bleeping out the swearing actually improved the show. In Canada, they didn't have any bleeps, and I reckoned it wasn't anywhere near as funny. It's just human nature - isn't it? - to be more attracted to something that's taboo. If someone tells you not to smoke, you wanna smoke. If they say, 'Don't do drugs,' you wanna do drugs. That's why I've always thought that the best way to stop people taking drugs is to legalise the fucking things. It would take people about five seconds to realise that being an addict is a terribly unattractive and pathetic way to be, whereas at the moment it still has that kind of rebel cool vibe to it, y'know?
Anyway, Sharon replied to Bill Cosby.
'Stop me if you've heard this one before, Mr Cosby,' she wrote, 'but people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, and we all know about your little affair, which has been all over the newspapers, so how about you put your own house in order before having a go at ours?'
She also pointed out that when you switch on the telly in America, there's always a guy being shot or chopped up or scraped off the tarmac, and no one bats an eyelid. But if you say 'fuck', everyone freaks out. It's insane when you think about it.
Killing's fine, but swearing isn't.
To be fair to Bill, we got a very nice reply from him, saying, 'Hands up, you got me, I'm sorry.'
So he was very cool about it in the end.

MTV shit themselves when
The Osbournes
got so big, so quickly, 'cos they hadn't signed a long-term deal with us. So then all the games started - and you know me, I can't stand all that bullshit. But it didn't stop them trying to drag me into it.
Not long after the ratings went crazy, I remember me and Sharon were in New York to do the
Total Request Live
show at the MTV building in Times Square. As soon as we went off air, this exec in a suit came up to us and said, 'Hey, I've got a surprise for you guys.'
'What kind of surprise?' I said.
'Follow me, and I'll show you.'
So this guy took us up to a boardroom on one of the highest floors in the building. There was a big conference table in the middle with telephones on it and chairs all around, and these huge windows looking out over the New York skyline.
'Are you ready?' he asked us.
I looked at Sharon, and she looked back at me. Neither of us knew what the fuck was going on. Then the bloke hit the speakerphone button, and this
Charlie's Angels
voice came on the line.
'Have you got the gift?' it said.
'Yep,' said the bloke.
'OK, give them the gift.'
The bloke reached into his jacket pocket, took out this gold-embossed envelope, and handed it to me.
I opened it and saw a cheque for $250,000.
'What
is
this?' I said.
'A gift,' the guy told me. 'From MTV.'
Now, I might not be much of a businessman, but even I knew that cashing a cheque for $250,000 could be seen as some kind of contract. If that thing had landed in my bank account, the negotiations for the next few seasons would have been a whole different ball game. I mean, maybe it
was
just a gift. Maybe they weren't trying to pull any funny stuff. But it still creeped me out. Even Sharon was speechless, for once.
'Thanks very much,' I said. 'Would you mind sending it to my lawyer's office? He deals with all that.' Talk about swimming with fucking sharks.

By the summer of 2002, it seemed like
The Osbournes
was the biggest thing on the planet. And the stress of it was killing me. After falling off the wagon at the Correspondents' Dinner, I'd been getting pissed every day. And I was still necking as much prescription medication as I could get my hands on - which was
a lot
At one point I was on forty-two different pills a day: sedatives, sleeping medication, anti-depressants, amphetamines, anti-seizure medication, anti-psychotics. You fucking name it, I was on it. I was taking an unbelievable quantity of drugs. Half the pills were just to cancel out the side-effects of the others.

And none of them seemed to be making me any better. My tremor was so bad that I was shaking like an epileptic. My speech was terrible. I'd even started to develop a stammer, which I'd never had before - although stammers run in my family. If someone asked me a question, I would panic, and by the time the words reached my mouth from my brain, they would be all jumbled. And that just made me even more stressed, 'cos I thought it was the beginning of the end for me. Any day now, I thought to myself, a doctor was gonna take me aside and say to me, 'I'm very sorry, Mr Osbourne, but the tests have come back, and you have MS.' Or Parkinson's disease. Or something equally horrific.

I started to get very self-conscious about it. I remember watching some clips from
The Osbournes
- and even
I
didn't have a clue what I was talking about. I mean, I've never had a problem playing the clown, but when it became a national joke that no one could understand a fucking word I said, it was a bit different. I began to feel like I had when I was at school and I couldn't read out a page from a book, and everyone laughed and called me an idiot. So I just got more pissed and more stoned. But the drink and the drugs made my tremor worse - which was the exact opposite of what I'd expected, because alcoholics get the DTs when they come
off
the booze, not when they're
on
it. And the pills my docs were giving me were supposed to make the shaking go away.

There seemed to be only one rational explanation for all of it.
I was dying.
So every other week I had a new test. It was like a new hobby. But none of the results ever came

back positive. Then I began to wonder if I was getting tested for the wrong things. I mean, it was cancer that had killed my father, not Parkinson's disease. So I went to see a cancer specialist.

'Look,' I said to him, 'is there some kind of high-tech scan you can do that'll tell me if I'm gonna get cancer?'
'What kind of cancer?'
'Any kind of cancer.'
'Well,' he said. 'Yes there is... sort of.'
'What d'you mean, "sort of"?'
'There is a machine. But it won't be available for another five years, at the very least.'
'Why not?'
'Because they haven't finished inventing it yet.'
'Is there anything else you can do, then?'
'You could always get a colonoscopy. Although, y'know, I really don't see any warning--'
'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.