22 • The Sunday Times MagazineP
ast the palm trees
and monster
4x4s with idling
engines and suited
chauffeurs, I arrive
at the front desk of
the Beverly Hills
Hotel ten minutes
early for my 11am
interview with
Sharon Osbourne.
She is staying here while her Los Angeles
home is being refurbished. A few calls later
her assistant tells me our meeting starts at
12.30. “Change of plans?” the receptionist
asks wryly. “Welcome to Hollywood.”
In the hotel’s restaurant I resist “Sinatra’s
meatballs”, even though my jet-lagged body
thinks it’s dinner time, and eke out a coffee.
Two twentysomething men on the next
table are talking about crypto-bond markets
and the likelihood of a 2024 presidential
race between Donald Trump and Dwayne
“the Rock” Johnson, the wrestler turned
actor who’s flirting with entering politics.
“The Rock is probably pretty centrist and
he’d attract Gen Z,” says blue chinos before
his mate soliloquises on “the dying animal
that is the boomer white man”.
At 12.34 Osbourne — camera-ready with
her trademark purple-red hair and a fully
made-up face — arrives to save me. She has
previously admitted to spending a fortune
on plastic surgery and looks better in theflesh than in recent social media pictures.
“I had a full facelift done in October and
I looked like one of those f***ing mummies
that they wrap [with bandages],” the TV star
says, chuckling. “It hurt like hell. You have
no idea.”
The operation lasted five and a half hours
and the initial result was worrying. “I’m
telling you, it was horrendous. [To the
surgeon] I’m, like, ‘You’ve got to be f***ing
joking.’ One eye was different to the other.
I looked like a f***ing Cyclops. I’m, like, ‘All
I need is a hunchback.’” Ozzy, Osbourne’s
rocker husband who has had work done
himself, was similarly horrified. “He said,
‘I don’t care how much it costs, we’ll get it
redone.’” Her face is “settling now” and
she’s pleased with it.
Osbourne is the definition of a force of
nature, radiating energy that zaps away any
jet lag. She swears relentlessly, makes
pantomime “oohs” and is faultlessly polite
to the liveried waiters.
We’re meant to be talking business:
Osbourne is a star signing for TalkTV,
the television channel being launched
tomorrow by News UK (which also owns
The Sunday Times). “Ooh, I think it’s
fabulous,” purrs the 69-year-old, who will
front a primetime evening show, The Talk,
alongside five as-yet-unrevealed panellists.
They’ll discuss “whatever is the big news
that day”. The channel’s strapline is
“Straight Talking Starts Here”, whichseems a perfect fit for Mrs O. “You say what
you feel and you’re not following one party
at all,” she says, admitting that she doesn’t
vote for any political party. “I don’t trust
anybody. I just don’t think anybody’s there
for the right reason.”
Osbourne is joining her “very good
friend” Piers Morgan, who will present his
own show, Piers Morgan Uncensored; she got
the gig after stepping down from co-hosting
a US chat show on CBS, also called The
Talk, following an almighty brouhaha.
Let’s rewind. In March 2021 the
Duchess of Sussex gave her bombshell
interview to Oprah Winfrey, in which she
said an unnamed member of the royal
family had queried “how dark” the skin
of her unborn son might be; revealed her
mental health became so bad she “didn’t
want to be alive any more”; and said she
did not receive the help she asked for from
Buckingham Palace. On Good Morning
Britain the next day Morgan said: “I’m
sorry, I don’t believe a word she says.”
Thousands complained to Ofcom about
Morgan, who critics argued was racist for
disputing Meghan’s lived experience. He
later quit ITV. Ofcom eventually cleared
him, citing his right to free speech, but told
ITV to take greater care around content
discussing mental health and suicide.
Across the Atlantic, Osbourne had
tweeted her support for Morgan. The
following day Sheryl Underwood,From left: Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, and with their children, Jack, Aimee and Kelly, in the 1980s. Previous pages: Sharon at her LA homeHer time was up at CBS. “They said to me,
‘We don’t think that you’re repentant enough’ ”