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It's generally accepted that during the period of The Osbournes, Ozzy was further out than Stevie Smith on a boogie board. Perhaps not, though:
The Black Sabbath rocker claims he ''never watched one f****ing episode'' of his MTV reality show.Not so stupid, then.
Who would have guessed? Ozzy never really wanted to be cast as a clown in a reality show, and it was all Sharon's idea:
"You know what? That TV celebrity that I became, I f**king didn't like it," he said. "Sharon loves flying around the world and being a TV star. I don't. I can't stand it, because my heart is in music.
"I hated every second of it. She kept pushing me into this f**king stuff. I said, 'I tell you what, Sharon, don't even f**ing ask me, don't even go there with me in future, because I don't want to know'."
This may prove a little hard to believe, but it seems Ozzy Osbourne might not have been totally in the room when they made The Osbournes:
Rock legend Ozzy Osbourne has confessed he refuses to watch his family's hit reality TV show, The Osbournes - because he was stoned or drunk every day of filming.
The Black Sabbath frontman, 60, said: "Every shot, I can tell you what time of day it was by the way my body language was.
At the end of the day I'd go in my bunker and smoke."
Before the programme aired, the misgivings about Sharon's latest vehicle for making cash from her brood had sat mostly within the Fox Broadcasting family - affiliates dropping the programme, the network slicing airtime and junking the idea of a series in favour of an unspecified number of one-off "specials".
But now the programme has aired, the question is: What did America think?
For Variety, it was "a disjointed mess":
Ostensibly a variety show shot in front of a boisterous studio audience, the program featured a mix of live and taped elements -- the first problem being that among the show's central family, only Jack Osbourne appears to have any natural aptitude for the hosting part of the gig.
The premiere's centerpiece, oddly, hinged on a staged (and most likely not legal) wedding, in which an audience member was bushwhacked by a "Get married now or else" ultimatum from his girlfriend. Although it was rather uncomfortable to watch, at least that drawn-out interlude offered a respite from watching Ozzy, Sharon and Kelly curse, with little faces appearing over their mouths to prevent even lip readers from being offended.
That they'd be the cutting edge for Fox made them seem a little dated as well. The network must have realized what a dud it had on its hand. Not only did Tuesday's show not start a season - it was a one-shot teaser for an unannounced future season - it was cut from 60 minutes, to 40 to 35.
And from the cutting, we may have been spared the sight of Kelly singing - or even Ozzy doing a number. As it was, we were left with some unpalatable filmed bits - of a cussing kid version of "The Osbournes" annoying people in a theater, to Ozzy and Kelly spending a day at a fast food drive through - a ploy David Letterman did much more wittily years ago - that ended up with them throwing food at the cars in line.
It seems a lifetime since, in 2002, the Osbournes came across as refreshingly nutty on their MTV reality show. On The Osbournes: Reloaded, Ozzy, Sharon, Kelly, and Jack were just pathetic. No wonder Fox kept chopping this proposed hour-long "variety show" into an ever-smaller size before airing it. The network is supposed to air five more Reloadeds. Don't hold your breath. Or maybe, do hold your breath: The stink of this show will last a long time.
Everyone's a critic. Unfortunately for The Osbournes, amongst 'everyone' is numbered the head of the Fox affiliate in Panama City, Florida, who has decided that The Osbournes Reloaded isn't fit for showing as family entertainment and has kicked it from the schedules.
Still, at least in Panama City Sharon can take comfort in being shifted for a rerun of The Simpsons. In Milwaukee, the local Fox station is dumping them for a documentary about drugs.
Mind you, if you want to warn kids about the dangers of taking too many drugs, surely putting Ozzy on screen is the best thing you can do?
If Ozzy is able to spot through the fug that the Osbournes Reloaded is uncomfortable to watch, what hope for America as a whole?
Ozzy mumbles:
The show will include a variety of skits and pranks, including one sketch where Ozzy serves customers at the drive-through window of a fast food restaurant. But Ozzy confessed he was less than enamored with the segment, saying, "Not to my liking, to be honest with you. I didn't get involved in the entertainment business to do fast food restaurants. These people really work . . . I come from a working class background. I've never forgotten that. I've done my share of destroying hotel rooms and all of that stuff. It makes me realize they're still out there and they're still doing them jobs."
The cat-giving-birth-to-snakes event that is the planned Osbournes US TV variety show is starting to suffer from spasms as bad as those induced in observers by the very idea.
The Writers Guild Of America has instructed members to not deliver any scripts for the programme, claiming that the producers Freemantle are trying to underpay.
Mind you, why would you bother paying a decent writer a decent wage to write words that are just going to end up being mangled by Ozzy or Kelly anyway? Freemantle might as well just buy a box of flashcards, shuffle them up and use those as prompts.
Not that we believe the "scoop" for a moment - after all, it's in today's Daily Star, which leads on the claim that "250,000 of us could have died" which is just alarmist bollocky lies - but they reckon that Robbie Williams has been offered a million quid to be the subject of what we now have to call "an Osbournes-style documentary." I cannot start to describe how much I don't want to see Williams' everyday life, but the phrase "I'd rather have ricin dripped into my eyeballs" may give you a flavour.
The trouble with anything that happens to the Osbournes now - like a woman winning a necklace they claim she wasn't entitled to, at some lameass Christmas party; or the decision to renew their vows - you look and say "Is this something that happened, or is this something that's been made to happen to pad out a second series?"
Oh, and the next time anyone tries to tell you that Kelly Osbourne is some sort of wild rock woman, stare at them and say "In the US, she has allowed some weird pull-along toy with her face and a duck's bill to not only be manufactured in prototype, but also sold."
Kelly Osbourne has told the Times that - gasp - some of The Osbournes was made-up and her parents played up for the cameras. Surely not? How can we believe anything we ever see on Reality TV ever again?
