‘What the f*ck are we gonna do with you?’: It’s easy to write off Sharon and her split

WHEN news broke this week that Sharon Osbourne was separating from Ozzy after his rumoured affair with a hairdresser, it hit a nerve.

I REMEMBER the first time Sharon Osbourne and I bonded. It was over a mutual hatred of talent show contestants at 4am on a weekday morning. I was eating grated cheese out of the packet and she was on Conan O’Brien’s talk show.

“They’ve all got something wrong — they’ve either got one lung, one kidney, or they came out like this or like that and they’ve all got somebody sick in hospital,” she told Conan of the endless line of Susan Boyles being rolled out on stage. “And it’s like, oh Lord, just shut up and sing. But then when they sing, it’s like, please stop it. I can’t take it any more. And it doesn’t matter whether the chair revolves or you look at them or you don’t look at them — because they’re making it like it’s just “the voice”. “Everything that matters is the voice”. Well hold on here, that’s great when you’re butt f*ckin ugly and you’re, like, 9000 pounds — what the f*ck are we gonna do with you?”

When news broke this week that Sharon Osbourne was separating from Ozzy after his rumoured affair with a hairdresser, it hit a nerve. And I don’t care about things often. I’m not even really sure how to spell my nephew’s name.

Osbourne confirmed that she and Ozzy are not living together.

Last October, when Gwen Stefani found out through iCloud that her husband Gavin Rossdale was cheating on her with that Australian chick, I felt nothing. My knowledge of iCloud was greater than my sympathy for Gwen.

When Jennifer Garner split from Ben Affleck after he allegedly cheated with the nanny, I quickly googled said nanny to find out if it was male or female and if I finally had my chance to fill a JLo shaped hole in Ben’s heart.

And unlike everyone else, I didn’t really have an opinion on the whole Jennifer/Brad/Angelina/Mr Smith/Mrs Smith/Ross/Rachel thing. Jennifer’s still the same radiant yet sad lady we know in tabloid and film.

But Sharon’s different.

It’s easy to write Sharon off. She’s had the same haircut for the past 25 years. She’s vulgar. Her surgery gets a bit Michael Jacksony. She makes fun of 9000 pound losers who are “f*ckin’ ugly”. It’s hard to sympathise with someone who seems so insensitive. “Insensitive” isn’t the right word. But when you’re known for trashing people’s offices after they try to rip you off, and you make your kids take a dump in a box so you can send it to reporters who’ve written mean stories about you, public perception is that you’re rather thick skinned.

Rock singer Ozzy Osbourne gives his wife Sharon a kiss as they arrive at the White House Correspondent's Dinner in 2002.

She plays hard because she’s always had to. She’s responsible for managing, and reviving, her husband’s metal career since the ‘70s and turning him into an icon. She survived the time he came home from performing at a peace festival in 1989 and drunkenly tried to strangle her. In 2001, when the couple debuted on the Sunday Times Rich List, she was responsible for more than half of their AU$79m earnings, mainly from her artist management business.

She’s tough. And she’s realistic about her imperfect relationship.

“Everybody cheats,” she laughed off in an interview in 2014.

“I would like to say it’s maybe just people in the music industry, or the film industry or the TV industry but it’s not. It goes further than that. I just think it’s a realistic view.”

Earlier this year, she casually mentioned Ozzy’s infidelity with nannies from when their three kids were young.

Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne with daughter Kelly.

“I caught two of them in bed with Ozzy at different times,” she told her co-hosts on The Talk. “And it goes on and on and on.”

Despite Sharon’s flippancy about the turbulent realities of long-term relationships, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t care.

Like most, I don’t understand how or why’s she managed to tolerate Ozzy’s pale, creaky, body rubbing up against hers all these years — his long, thin hair flicking her flesh as he mumbles something incoherent. The thought makes me want to vom. But after 33 years, it’s apparently the intel about Ozzy’s affair with the hairdresser that finally broke her.

Following a weekend of international headlines, she took the Monday off her morning show, The Talk. And when she returned, there were no offensive jokes. Not even a f*ck.

Asked how the recent problems in her marriage were so different to the ones that have come up so regularly before, she said: “Because I’m 63 years of age and I can’t keep living like this.”

Then, in a nod to Beyonce, she took a sip from a big glass of lemonade. And that said it all.

Ahh! Lemonade.