Ozzy Osbourne: will die "just like that"

David Arden is worried about Ozzy Osbourne.

Who he? He's Sharon Osbourne's younger brother. And his concern is that Sharon is working Oz so hard, he's going to die on stage:

“I have known Ozzy since 1970. He is going to do 40 shows on the bounce, starting in mid-October and he’s talking about a Black Sabbath tour after that.

“I think he’s worn out. When the cameras are off he just sits there quietly.

“Sharon will keep Ozzy on the road until, like Tommy Cooper, he dies on stage.

“Sharon needs him to work because of her exorbitant spending — although, in fairness to her, Ozzy wouldn’t know what to do if he ever retired.”

To be honest, it doesn't seem like Ozzy knows what he's doing with himself at the moment. But the vision of a man who only comes alive when the spotlight is on him sounds more like late-period Ronald Reagan than Tommy Cooper.

Arden then canters through Sharon's tales of childhood poverty and suggests that she might be disembellishing her childhood like a character in a Monty Python sketch:

“She claimed she came up from nothing but there was no way we were impoverished.

“She said she could remember bailiffs coming round every week and taking the furniture out and then having it brought back. Absolute codswallop.

“There were times electricity and phone bills weren’t paid on time.

“My dad would make sure the best steak was on the table and cashmere coats were on his children and then worry about the bills.

“We had hand-made clothes. At the age of six she had her shoes hand-made at Freed’s of St Martin’s Lane.

“We also went to private schools. My dad had a twinkle in his eye for Sharon. She could do no wrong.

“She over-sensationalises her life. When she says her father used to pull her hair ... he would never do that. She was his little Jewish Princess.

It should be pointed out that Arden and his sister have had a falling out in the summer, over their Dad's funeral, and oddly, he never seemed that bothered about how hard Sharon was working Ozzy before.

Further, Arden produced Sharon's chatshow on daytime in America which was every bit as big a success as her one for ITV, the Moribund Teatime Audience Drop-Off Hour or whatever it was called.

He seems to have suddenly noticed, though, that Osbourne isn't very nice:

David claims further evidence of Sharon’s hypocrisy emerged in her reaction to an overweight contestant on the new series of X-Factor.

Sharon and fellow judge Louis Walsh exploded with laughter when Dawn Gerrard said she used to be a jockey.

David said: “Sharon is one of the biggest hypocrites around.

“She has talked about her own struggles with weight problems.”

Even if it wasn't hypocritical, that's still just bloody nasty - and although going on the X Factor is like tattooing Kick Me on your face-parts, there's really no excuse for it.

There is, of course, no response from Sharon in the Sun's report, but somehow, this doesn't read like a feature that will heal the family rift.