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Hello everyone, and.

Welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret history and Little Lone, fascinating facts behind your favorite music, movies, TV shows, and more.

We're two guys with too much free time in our hands.

My name is Jordan Runtag.

And I'm Alex Hegel and Jordan.

On this episode, we are turning our bloodshot eyes to the Osbourns, the reality TV load star that turned Ozzy Osbourne from a cocaine addled heavy metal icon into a cuddly sitcomesque patriarch and foisted his wife Sharon and daughter Kelly onto an unsuspecting nation.

Son Jack was also there.

Oh of Jack.

Yeah, we'll get to Jack.

I have no quarrel with him.

He's fine.

The show's twentieth anniversary was in March, which means it's nearly twice as old as Ozzy's original tenure in Black Sabbath, which is something I find Hilaire.

It's how like Henry Rollins has been doing spoken word about being in Black Flag for like seven times the amount of time he was in Black Flag.

Anyway, Jordan, I cannot imagine you being a fan of this show, or really of Black Sabbath in general.

I was just getting into my Black Sabbath fandom when this came on, so yeah, I was poised to enjoy it.

What about you, No.

I mean, back in two thousand and two, I was tuned into TV land, watching like the actual fifties sitcoms that this show spoofed, so like, yes, the Cardigan crowd was more my thing.

I was deep into the adventures of Ozzy and Harriet rather than Ozzy Osbourne, which I mean, does anyone get that reference?

Like the Adventures of Ozzy and Harriet, because that's actually an interesting story.

They were sort of, in a weird way, the actual first reality TV family.

Have you ever heard of them?

They they were a real family and they all acted together in this sitcom that the dad produced and directed Ozzy and they acted on a set of their house that was like identical to their real house, and it was just like things that were happening in the real life.

They were just right into the show.

And then they have Ricky Nelson, who was a pop singer in the sixties, like had to you know, pop career spin off.

I'm just like Kelly did in the Osbourne's like, it's definitely interesting, but well, let's not.

Tar Ricky Nelson with the same brush as I'm sorry, I'm going to be really mean to Kelly in this episode.

I don't find her charming anyway.

That's that's enough about that, Ozzie.

Let's get into the other Azzie, the Prince of Darkness.

Yeah.

I would have never dreamed that the guy behind Crazy Train would become one of the most beloved TV personalities of our generation.

It's easy to forget that there weren't really any shows at this time that did the whole like Hollywood wildlife documentary thing where they showed celebrities in their natural habitat.

And in addition to the lack of these kinds of shows, this was also pre social media, so famous people's private lives truly private.

Yeah, and it's difficult for people who are maybe ten years younger than us to recall how compelling it was so just see celebrities at home doing normal stuff or like in their car on.

I mean, these shows are so run of the mill now that that almost might say boring, but the premise was groundbreaking.

On the Osbourne's and The New York Times had a review.

I think it was the week that The Osbourne Show premiered, and it said most shows take nobody's and turn them into somebody's.

This show took somebody's and turned them into nobody's, which is great.

I mean, it's sort of.

Like a fish out of water story about Ozzy just trying to make sense of the normal world and managing people who are asking him to do simple tasks.

I mean, you know, I went to screenwriting school.

They told me that drama is conflict, and sometimes that's Hamlet, sometimes that's Sophie's choice, and sometimes that's a man trying to figure out how to use his remote control so you can watch a World War two documentary on the History Channel.

Drama comes in many forms.

That was gonna say before we set this episode, I really need to ask, can you scream my name?

Like Sharon?

I used to have a really good Ausie impression in my back pocket.

I don't think I have it anymore.

It's been a while.

I mean, it is really funny.

One of the two most formative things that I spent on a godly amount of time watching.

We're both on VH one.

It was thee hundred Greatest Artists of Hard Rock Countdown hosted by carmenal Elektra and The Most Shocking Moments in Rock and Roll hosted by Mark McGrath, and that came out in two thousand and one.

So like the whole thing about like Ozzie biting the head off the bat, snorting the line of ants, that was all like part of the yeah, and it's all part of like the received hagiography about him.

But like also, this wasn't like Mark Burnett or whatever.

This like the people who did this kind of just came out of nowhere at MTV.

It really is, it really is quite a thing.

Anyway, whatever the case may be, we are going to get into the medical feasibility of snorting that line of ants, Sharon's whatever she's been up too lately, whatever you can call that, and the curiously high amount of dollars that several pairs of Ozzie's wire rim glasses sold at auction in two thousand and seven.

And there's the flying ham Oh yes, and how could we forget Hamgate?

Here's everything you didn't know about the Osbourne's.

So we touched on this seconds earlier, but there were not a ton of shows that brought you into the celebrity world.

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous is probably the easiest analog that you could get into.

But it was actually an episode of MTV's Cribs two years before the Osbourne's two thousand and two launch.

That was kind of their soft audition for the show.

You know, by two thousand, Ozzie hadn't put out an album since Osmosis in nineteen ninety five.

The man has a truly stellar track record of naming records after his names, just different Oz puns.

Gotta love him.

Blizzard of Oz is the best one.

I think it's good.

It's good.

So, as we mentioned, the most you'd see of Ozzy around this time was either at Ozfest each year, where they would trot him out to do the Sabbath and the solo stuff with a rotating cast of much younger musicians, including pre Metallica bassist Rob Trujillo at one point, or on some VH one special about him biting the head off the bat, snorting the line of ants, or drinking his own urine or or urinating on the Alamo.

They'll forget that.

Yes, yes, another favorite thing, the ant thing.

Let's just get this out of the way immediately comes from the members of Motley Crue, who wrote about it in the Dirt, which is their famous garbage book.

Yeah, garbage book about them being garbage people in a garbage band.

They've stood by it.

Ozzy perhaps obviously says he has no memory of it, and his guitar player, one of his guitarists, Jakie Lee, who's obviously just a fantastic shredder guitarist, he said in twenty nineteen, I was there and I never saw ants.

He snorted a little spider.

Still bad, still bad, Yeah, still weird, but not as bad as the line of ants.

I don't care what the other guys say.

There was no ants, so just on the flip side of that.

Ozzie also says that he has no memory of the birth of his first two kids, so he could it could have happened, and he also could have genuinely not remembered it.

We have a lot of unreliable narrators on this show, from like Robert Plant and Jimmy Page to you know, a lot of unreliable narrators, but Ozzy may be the most unreliable anyway.

The Osbourne's opened their home to Cribs in September of two thousand and do you know who The other guests on that episode were Jordan No, huh, Moby and Jewel.

That's very two thousand, Yeah, insanely two thousand.

So Kelly during that episode famously outs Ozzy as a Britney Spears and Sink fan.

And you know, there's been two great oral histories of the show that came out this year.

The ringer did one of them, and Jack told them that whenever the network did anything on oz Fest, which is Ozzy's annual semi annual, I have no idea it's like his heavy metal music fest.

Whenever it would do anything on it, Jack and Kelly were always like kind of the faces of it.

And so he called that Cribs episode a second audition reel.

We're gonna get into a lot.

Jack and Kelly are like Ozzie's like representatives here on earth, like, yeah, his avatars.

There's a lot of kind of no name producers in here.

I'll due respect to them.

So we're gonna be naming a lot of people, So take notes people.

Producer Greg Johnston, who had kicked around MTV for a few years prior to doing stuff like Buzzkill and Paully Shore's show Totally Polly, I have zero much like Ozzy and the Birth of his children.

I have no memory of that show based on Jack and Kelly, and they're wild off the charts chemistry on camera.

I guess they were tapping them for VJA opportunities.

But he took a lunch with Sharon at one point and she was just telling stories about I mean, she's been in show business for forever.

She took over Ozzie's career and really gave him his second of like three acts.

So she is just telling all these stories, and you know, he was like, wait a second, the producers are eating out the palm of her hand.

I mean, she's telling all these wild stories about like just misadventures that Ozzie gets up to around the house and stuff.

And I guess over the course of this lunch, she kind of semi comically moaned, God, I keep telling people these stories and people don't ever believe half the stories I tell them.

I need proof, And that kind of.

Sparked the brain wave with wait a minute, let's get this on camera.

So there's another producer named Jeff Stilson who is formerly of The Chris Rock Show.

He traces the inspiration to this to a BBC documentary called Fame and Fortune that featured the Osbourne There's a clip of tube.

It's fun.

Yeah, it definitely seems like a soft launch of the Osbourne's.

Like there's a scene of them all eating dinner on the table and they're singing Monty Python's always look on the bright Side of life and cursing at one another, and little Kelly's like scolding her father, like we shouldn't be using that language at the dinner table.

It's very sweet.

You know.

We just spent the entire intro to the show talking about how we didn't see Elsie's this kind of character.

But have you ever seen decline in the of Western Civilization?

Part two The Hair Metal Years.

No, there's footage of Ozzie like puttering around the kitchen in a bathroom, fixing eggs and like making breakfast.

So he really has always been this person.

It's just a matter of whether or not how many cameras were there or not.

Yeah, he got his platform.

Yeah, fifty years into his career, he finally got his platform.

Another producer, Lois Current, had also worked on The Dating game, so quite an interesting collection of people kind of talent converging on this show.

A motley crew, if you will get a I just want to give a quick shout out to Sharon Osbourne.

You touched on this earlier, but she was just instrumental and putting all this together and in so many of the Osbourne family business dealings.

And she's very much the business brains in this family.

And it's in her blood because her dad was actually Ozzie's manager.

In Black Sabbath, a guy called Don Arden who is one of the most notorious music business heavies of all time.

He's been called the al Capone of pop, the English Godfather, and most vaguely, but perhaps most terrifyingly, mister Big.

And I don't want to know how he got that nickname.

His business practices, if you could even call it, that, are our legendary.

I mean, back in the sixties he bribed the people who published music charts to place.

His acts higher on the charts.

When one of his acts complained about unpaid royalties, he replied, I have the strength of ten men in these hands and threaten to throw him out of a window.

The British group the Small Faces, which later morphed into Rod Stewart's group The Faces.

They tried to get a new manager.

Don Arden didn't like this.

He went to this new manager and either threatened or some say did dangle this guy by his ankles out of a window.

I mean, so this guy's basically Shug Night thirty.

Years early, yeah, wild, and Sharon is his daughter, which is how she met Ozzy weird.

Side note.

Before they dated, she dated Jay Leno ew like Comedy Store era Jay Leno?

Can you imagine what I want?

Like a butterfly effect about what, like the world would be totally different.

I don't want to imagine that world, frankly.

I mean, what if Jay Leno fronted Black Sabbath there were connection to Sharon?

I mean Jesus Christ.

So in Black Sabbath, who Sharon's dad managed, fired Ozzy in nineteen seventy nine.

Sharon took over as Ozzie's manager and they also began a relationship, and her dad, donn Arden, was furious and the next time she visited pregnant, he supposedly sicked his dogs on her and she was mauled and lost the baby.

That is insane.

It's Gothic.

So Sharon then took Ozzie's contract to an American label and her father.

Her own father sued her for a million dollars in damages for going against him, and they didn't speak for twenty years, And in two thousand and one, Sharon told The Guardian, he taught me everything not to do in business.

My father's never seen any of my three kids, and as far as I'm concerned, he never will.

Later that same year, I guess, at Ozzie's insistence, Sharon and her dad reconciled and he took a walk on role on The Osbournes and he met finally Jack and Kelly for the first time, who by this point were like almost in their twenties.

But by this time Don Arden was no longer the feared music manager of old.

He was beginning to succumb to Alzheimer's and he died in two thousand and seven.

So a seriously fierce guy, and he passed that ferocity on to his daughter Sharon, and hence she ruled over the Osbourne's TV production with a iron fist, but a benevolent iron fist.

Yeah, so again, it can't be underscored enough.

How little rule book there was for reality TV at this point.

I mean, I don't even know if reality TV was like the accepted term for it.

I mean, I don't think it existed.

Then they thought of this really is a documentary sitcom?

Was this sort of phrase that they used?

Jack said, the only reference we had for reality TV at the time was the real world road rules Cops, which now I'm imagining like the Ozzy either the Ozzie version of Bad Boys or Crazy Train done in the style of the reggae band who did Cops.

You know.

One of the things that they were worried about was conversations around Ozzy's sobriety, making it under the air.

But regardless, Johnston started shooting basic footage in the summer of two thousand and one and moved the production team into the house in October same year.

Yeah, the Osbourne's were in the midst of moving houses.

Anyways, A producers thought this was like a great starting point for the show, this new beginning in their new home.

They toured the house with Sharon and asked if they could set up a control room in an old maid's quarters, and to their shock, she was fine with it and agreed and it was generally thought that they'd be hanging around for like a couple of weeks, like Sharon said, maybe three weeks top.

But three years later they were still there filming at some points up to eighteen hours a day, and the crew members would liken it to filming a wildlife documentary.

It's really really insane to think now how this was shot.

The amount of time the producers had at their disposal is just absolutely mind boggling.

Because Sharon was an executive producer, so there was kind of a certain sense of safety there from what the family's perspective, that you know, nothing truly that horrible would make it to air because they would have final.

Say I shudder, I shudder to think at the NDA's that were drawn up for this.

Yes, oh yeah were There were a few off limits rooms in the house.

I think like Ozzie's home, theater room or something was one of them you'd go to like hang out, and there are a few others.

But the crew shots six days a week for about between sixteen and eighteen hours a day, and they had cameras in nearly every room in the house, and they had one or two cameras following each I guess you'd call them principal cast member.

Each family member.

They had someone sleeping in the guest room at the Osbourne's house overnight in case something happened, which is how the famous ham throwing incident was preserved for posterity.

We'll get to that.

They even had a few spy cameras in some of the rooms, so if something started brewing in like one of the key public spaces of the house, they could kind of get wind of it and get their cameras in position.

So by the end of this they had thousands of hours of footage to call through for any given episode, which is just insane.

I mean, they've said that on average they would have about ten days worth of footage to make one single thirty minute episode, which would drive you insane now, I mean, but remember, the original premise was basically Real World Ozzy Osbourne, and the premise kind of diverged from that pretty quickly.

Some of the producers for the Osbourne show were friends with the Real World team, and so they called them up and asked them how they shot the show and kind of took notes and got some advice for how to shoot a people documentary.

Basically, a Wildlife People documentary, and there were really two key differences between how the real world was shot and how the Osborne's were shot.

First of all, in the real world, the camera crew has really strict instructions not to speak to any of the cast mates, and this wasn't going to work on the Osbourne's.

I mean, your guests in this family's house, so some kind of interplay and interaction is required.

It be weird if you didn't, like, you know, acknowledge them and say hi.

The Osbourne producers also diverged from the real world by eliminating any talking heads segments, so you know, instead of having the cast give confessionals, they approached the show as, in their words, a documentary sitcom where the story was moved along just by the footage.

No narration, no retrospective insight, no confessionals, no asides.

It was an unscripted sitcom straight up.

I mean, the term reality TV, as we said earlier, hadn't really been invented yet, or if it had, it wasn't in you know, wide usage.

So to the producers, this was a documentary sitcom.

Yeah, and MTV didn't know what to do ever, Well, well, yeah, by this point, it's kind of calcified into an institution that did not seem to know what it was doing.

But yeah, there were some early battles and after those happened, production just kind of got to do it it wanted.

And some of the examples of battles that they would have was like MTV typical, like exec thinking was like, well this is this is about the Osbourne so we've got to have like current heavy metal playing under it.

So they I think stilsoner Johnston talks about like seeing dailies where they had like Lincoln Park playing under this footage, which is such a miss by Miles.

Oh yeah, I mean what made this show work was that it was a faux fifties sitcom.

I mean yeah, I think at the first episode, wasn't there like a title on the screen that said, like here, you know, welcome the perfect American family.

Yeah yeah, yeah, it was that like perfect sarcasm.

But you know, instead of Ward Cleaver and all that Father Knows Best stuff, you had Ozzie.

So the whole idea of playing heavy metal underneath this just totally destroyed what was so special about the show, the playfulness and the humor, and I guess it kind of got fraught at one point, but they basically said like after they that battle, MTVS backed off at least presumably until the show was a huge hit and they decided to get their claws back into it.

But the funniest thing about this to me is that, I mean, this is I guess kind of well known in the metal community or heavy music community, is that Ozzie is not the wild man that he you know, seems to be or that VH one what have you believe.

He's a shy, unassuming, sweet young man from England, yes, from Birmingham, and he was shy of cameras and so producer Jonathan Taylor j T told Vice in their own oral history from this year.

In the early days, it was tough to get Ozzie.

He was very shy when we started filming.

In the first week or so of filming, we didn't see much of him.

So, as you mentioned earlier, one of the places that was off limits was his sort of like media lounge, which I guess he used for working on music and also screening movies, and he would just disappear in there for hours.

His other workaround was to stroll into the control room where they that they had set up and just talked to the crew whenever he didn't want to be filmed.

I mean, that's really smart.

I would break the illusion to like actually turn the cameras on the camera people.

I mean, this all makes sense because Ozzy's the only one of his entire family that has a reputation, and a huge one.

He has a lot to lose because no one could be sure if it would make him, you know, into this lovable pop cultural figure or just totally destroy his rock and roll credibility and the mystique that he'd been cultivating for thirty plus years.

So it makes sense that he was probably the most reluctant at the start to actually go along with all this.

And he later said that he regretted it.

There was an interview that he gave to the NME in twenty thirteen where he said, sprinkle and f bomb in between every other word here.

Of course, I regret doing the show.

I didn't want to be on television.

I didn't become a rock and roll singer to read the weather forecast, know what I mean.

And the rest of the family just kind of adapted, I think on the fly, maybe a little bit better to him.

Sharon told the ringers, she was like, at first you're like, oh, dear camera, I must get myself dressed, and this, that the other, and then after two weeks you're just like, get I'm going down on my pajamas.

I don't give a shit.

This is going to be a hard one to sell ads for all of these people use the F word very liberally as they will should.

You know the funny thing about that, apparently, I think Jack and Kelly have said that their parents didn't swear anywhere near as much around them before the show started taping.

And yeah, I mean there's just a thought on that you could say that they started playing into their larger than life TV personas, or just that the kids had reached a certain age, you know, they were in their ladies at this point, where like the parents no longer had to like be careful what they said around them.

But I thought that was interesting.

Yeah, and Jack, he said he didn't like being filmed while he was eating or first thing in the morning, both of which seemed eminently reasonable, and that he learned the now time honored reality TV show hack of ruining the audio feed whenever you don't want something used.

So the thing that a lot of people do don't know if this is coming across.

It's like the ASMR thing where you like scratch the microphone cover or you you clap into it.

The other thing you can do is if you have a lab mic, you tap the lab mic while you're talking.

So they can't use any of that.

I've never heard about any of that.

I know that when the Beatles were making the Get Back documentary that Peter Jackson just cut together Whenever they were having private conversations they didn't want on camera, they would just would strum noisily on their.

Guitars as loud as they could.

Peter Jackson finally like developed technology to be able to strip that away and actually hear what they were saying.

And he would and he would.

Yeah.

Jack's other move was to just cover up his camera with a towel when he was smoking pot or different friends were visiting.

The list of like celebrities, let's do a lightning round.

The list of celebrities who appeared on the Osborne's is really wild.

The fact that Mandy Moore was one of his buddies, same with Elijah Wood or were they just buddies which is weird.

Can't Yeah, I mean, all right, no disrespect to Jack Osborne, but it would really it would surprise me.

I mean, he's it wouldn't.

No, no, no, it wouldn't.

It would jibe with Mandy Moore dating downwards, okay, which she famously did for like a decade with Ryan Adams.

But anyway, Elijah Wood is funnier to me.

But you know whatever, this is like pure This is like Lord of the Rings era, right, Speaking of Peter Jackson.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he would have been on top of the world at this point.

Maybe he just went over to get high with jack and escape the pressures of being frodo Anyway, continue these are a little more left of center.

We got Roy Orbison's son was apparently over a lot and for a while I guess Jack Osborne dated Kirk Cobain's half sister.

I have no idea who that would be.

Yeah, I don't, I don't know.

I've read that somewhere and I want to believe it just for novelty value.

Who else we got?

Then there was the whole like dancing with Chrisina Aguilera thing, because it was like a famous fight on the show between Kelly and Jack where she was mad at him for dancing with Christina Aguilera, and I guess they had some kind of feud.

I don't know.

I love the idea of Christina Aguilera being like that divisive of a figure in the Osbourne.

It's like she was the line you do not cross.

Oh, she's like irate in this clip.

I don't know what the deal was, or maybe they were friends.

Kelly and Christina were friends and she didn't want like her brother dating or friends.

I don't know what it was, but there's this like fairly famous moment when they're like screaming at each other.

I just found one of the wildest things that I missed researching this.

What's a do you know that Christina Aguilera bought this house when like was she the person who bought it after the os once moved out?

I just saw this on Twitter that she bought it and turned Kelly's bedroom into a shoe closet, which.

Is okay, So there's something there that is we have just struck a nerve.

This single most that's up there with I don't know her.

That is so apex petty.

I love it.

Yeah, so at some point she bought it and then tried to unload it in the middle of her divorce.

Yeah, she sold for let's see eleven five, which is two million less than the asking price.

So yeah, do with that what you will.

Damn.

So Christina was around and just like the crew would tell these stories about hearing beautiful piano being played in the other room, and they'd walk in and find Elton John, which is like just a day at the office for them.

I mean, all these guests made for great TV.

But the downside was you had.

To like get them to sign off on all this stuff at the last minute, like get them to sign releases and everything.

But it actually wasn't that hard because well two reasons.

A lot of people in Hollywood knew that the Osbourne's House was a live set, so they kind of knew what they were getting into when they went there.

And a lot of you know, reality TV was so new that celebrities were pretty naive about it all and just were like, all right, no, I guess I'm gonna be on camera.

That's cool.

Can you imagine a time Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, we touched good a Motley Crue earlier.

Did you know that Motley Crue used to babysit the Osbourne kids in like the late eighties.

I don't you know.

My knee jerk reaction is to be horrified.

But it's much much funnier if one of them is like a CPR trained caregiver.

He comes over and he's got his hair up in like a loose bun, and he's wearing like reading glasses, and he's like, all right, kids in bed by seven, No teven, no screens, no screen time after eight.

You know, there's that other famous moment where Jack is basically trying to you know, Jack was a dude.

He was a teenager.

I'm surprised much worse things didn't come out with this show.

He's a teenage boy who is growing up wealthy in LA I'm sure they dodged many bullets.

Bullets if they're lucky.

I was waiting for that one to land.

Anyway.

Jack tries to get this moment where he's chasing a buddy's girl cut from the show, but Sharon, because she's a true professional, she says, sorry, Jack, we made an agreement.

Maybe next time you won't try your best friend's girl.

Yeah, yeah, you took the money.

Jack this is the business we've chosen.

On the flip side of that, one of the producers, Jonathan J.

T.

Taylor, tells a great story in the Vice.

Oral History about a moment early on in the production when Jack and Kelly were fighting and it seemed way too real to get this on camera, So the camera crew lowered their lenses and kind of quietly left the room, And the next day Jack said, wait, why'd you turn the cameras off?

So he kind of knew the deal too, you know, he's gone on to produce stuff and work on television.

He had the instincts early on.

Yeah, no, absolutely, I mean he later said that the development for the Osborne Show was so drawn out that he's had forgotten about it by the time it was time to start shooting.

Like he had gone off with his dad for one of the oz Fest tours that summer.

So then he gets home and he's gearing up to start high school and people start talking about a camera crew moving into his house and he's totally freaked out.

He's like, wait a minute, that's actually happening, which I mean, I feel bad for the guy in that sense.

I mean, can you imagine dealing with all that as you're starting high school, I truly cannot so.

Just as Jack was funniest and most filmable when he was being a weird horny withdrawn heavy metal team, Ozzie, as everyone agrees, is most magnetic when he's just puttering around being a dad.

If there's one thing other than Hamgate that this show has lodged in the popular consciousness, it is the bubble machine incident, when Sharon is pitching him new stage props or whatever for his tour and he says, bubbles, Sharon, I'm the Prince of Darkness, which is so funny and so perfect, but everyone in production seems like weirdly protective of him also and just have the most rable I would, yeah, oh my god, I'd be like protect Ozzy at all costs.

Yeah, I different reminiscences.

Reminiscences include him kind of puttering around the house in a cast looking for the cat because he was worried it would be attacked by coyotes, stepping in dog poop, being annoyed by the vacuum cleaner, trying to work out the remote so he could watch documentaries World War Two.

In one of the oral histories, Forgive Me and forgetting which one it is.

But there was a cut scene where Ozzie is getting a massage and becoming very like increasingly agitated with it, and she's the Messuse is like trying to talk him down and be like, okay, like you know whatever, however this is.

I mean, that's how I always talk to me on the rare occasions I get a massage because I can't relax and getting a massage.

So, yeah, I know exactly what he was probably told.

Yeah, And so there's a director named Donald Bull who recalled that after that scene, Ozzie came up to him and was like, Donald, that woman's breath smelled like a shit sandwich.

I couldn't stand it.

But he was still too nice to be like, I am a old, famous rock star.

I should not have to put up with this.

Stop touching.

Yes, stop touching me, get out of here, because he's just a sweet boy from Birmingham.

And having said all that, we'll be right back with more too much information right after this.

So Ozzie having the worst massage of his life was not the only thing the producers cut from the Osbourne's.

They also cut an entire sentient living breathing human being several actually at least one of them of her own volition.

Anyway, as listeners may or may not be aware of, there are other Osborne's siblings other than Jack and Kelly, and the show did leave in quite a bit like Sharon's battle with breast cancer, but they cut out a ton.

They cut out Kelly's dealing with drugs and alcohol.

She was in trouble with pill addiction, drinking, Ozzie being extremely high on camera, and the eldest Osbourne child, Amy, at this point, was trying to launch her own career as a musician, and this sweet summer child said, I don't want to capitalize on my family's name.

I want to go out on my own.

She later released her own music under ro which are initials, rather than make trying to capitalize on the family name.

And apparently this got so far as to they cut different versions of the episodes together that some had her in them and some didn't because she was so on the fence about participating in it.

That's weird that they didn't have.

A definite I'm surprised that they went through all that trouble to cut both versions because that's a whole lot of headaches, and I guess they had to do a whole lot of recuts, like at the very last minute, to basically not have her in it as much as possible, and on the rare occasions.

That she was in it, she was blurred out.

But she did have pretty solid reasons for not wanting to get into the ring on this circus.

She gave an interview I think it was to The Independent in twenty fifteen.

She said, I always really valued my privacy within that family and for me personally, morally and also just to give myself a chance to actually develop into a human being as opposed to just being remembered for being a teenager.

It didn't really line up with what I saw for my future, which I mean fair I given what like the way that reality TV stardom and like influencer culture has developed in the intervening twenty years, she seems like a sake yeah, like or like a Knight's templar, like an unlike elliot ness, like untouchably morally upright and pure.

But unsurprisingly to the rest of the family who were all trying to get that bag, has caused some riffs.

Mum was hurt and we definitely had a tough time, she said at one point, and one of the show's editors, Greg Nash, told the ringer, she was living at the house for me any of the years that we made the show, and we kept thinking, Oh, she'll come around.

He said.

It's just so funny how much she did not want any of that.

She thought appearing on the show would ruin her music career, which is funny because she probably had a better voice than Kelly, and Kelly's career took off because of the show.

That is a quote from one of the show's editors, Greg Nash.

And not you editorializing, but it also seems to me, yes, it's also me editorializing.

But go ahead, go.

This Amy thing keeps going, Oh yeah, this is really sad.

I guess the production of the show actually drove Amy, the oldest of Sharon and Ozzy's three children.

To leave the family home.

During an episode of The Talk in twenty eighteen, Sharon said that Amy moved out in her late teens, specifically because they were filming The Osbourne Show and she just didn wantn't be any part of it.

And Sharon said, I know that my eldest girl, Amy left home at sixteen, and she couldn't live in our house because we were filming, and it drove her insane.

She felt that she didn't want to grow up on camera.

She hated the idea.

It was appalling to her.

So she left at sixteen, and I regret every day that she did.

She was happy, but it broke my heart when she moved.

But apparently there was.

Even more drama once she moved out between Amy and the rest of the Osbourne's as a result of the show, which is really unfortunate.

Speaking again to The Independent in twenty fifteen, Amy said that the Osbourne show was quote very silly, which is true, and said that her parents' behavior on camera made her uncomfortable, which is sad.

She also admitted that she doesn't have a strong bond with either of her siblings.

I wouldn't say there's an ease between us, but there's an acceptance.

Do we socialize?

No?

She said that is a grim three clause sentence, like no ease, but an acceptance.

Do we see each other?

No?

Yeah, that's up there with like Hemingway's short story for Sale Shoes Never Worn.

Yeah, that's that's chilly.

That's there are other Osbourne's.

Still there are half siblings named Louis John and I did not know this Jessica Starshine from a previous marriage or not remember, Yeah, stepbrother named Elliot.

And then there's a Jordan and I have been giggling for the past five minutes over whether or not to refer to this person as a man or a boy, because he's a man now, but he was a miner when he was on the show.

He's like a friend of the family.

This woman died of colon cancer and Ozzie and Sharon promised her on her deathbed that they would take care of him.

His name is Robert Marcato and basically he's They basically took him in and Sharon told ABC in two thousand and two he is the only normal person in that house.

That's absolutely true.

I read that after a stint in acting school.

I read that he moved back with his father in Rhode Island in two thousand and eight, and he's been out of contact with the Osbourne's for a while.

I think that I don't know what the latest is with him and from Robert Marcado.

That brings us to Ham.

Like so many episodes of the show, we come to our segment on ham.

In two thousand and two, the Osbourne's were at a crossroads that involved ham.

The word ham, to me is so intrinsically comedically hilarious.

I'm gonna be leaning on that a lot going forward.

Experily, for a moment, I'd like to hear why.

As most things do, it comes back to my dad, who one of the weird, disgusting Pennsylvania trash foods that he likes eating is ham salad, which is exactly what it sounds like.

It's ham mayo and if you're feeling spicy some relish.

It's disgusting, and he makes it and eats it by the tub whenever there's a leftover Christmas ham or whatever.

And it's just like a joke with my sister and I just the phrase ham salad, even over text, just like sends us into paroxysms of laughter.

Anyway, viewers will recall that the Osbourne's had a feud with their neighbor, who get to in a moment.

This escalated to the point that you alluded to earlier, during which late at night when there was apparently like one guy working the Osborne's graveyard shift Sharon chucked a leftover Christmas ham over their shared fence to retaliate from the noise.

For the noise, what were they doing?

Was it just like loud music or a party.

Yeah, so we talked.

I think we talked about this a little later.

But this guy was like listening to playback of like his news.

It was another musician, and so they were listening to playback or they were listening to music.

It was loud in the backyard.

The Osbourne's took umbrage.

Things escalated to the point where they were just chucking detritus from their house over the fence.

Sharon famously throws a ham.

There is one part that does not make it to air.

Ozzy pulled a log out of their fire pit and chucks it over still flaming, right, Yeah, while it was still smoldering or on fire.

And when he saw the test footage, production had added like a cartoon like this is why we need a soundboard just for stuff like this.

Uh.

Production had added like a cartoon like glass shattering effect to the after he throws the log, and he was very concerned that he had actually broken one of their windows.

And he was like, oh my god.

They have children, they could call the police, blah blah blah.

And production was like, that wasn't real.

Sorry, well, sweet Birmingham boy Ozzie.

And this gets back to him being like we need to protect him.

Yes, protect Ozzie at all costs.

I mean, it is a little cruel for production to be playing with the perception of reality of someone who did acid for so many years as Ozzie did, Like, maybe he's not the guy you want to be, like literally toying with the fabric of his reality.

But the Osbourne's neighbors, I'm a little shocked it took us this long to get to this.

One of them is Pat Boone, easy listening icon Pat Boone, not the man on the receiving end of Sharon's ham, but indeed one of their neighbors.

And he told People magazine in two thousand and two that he had never had any problems with the Osbourne's.

He said, any loud music that was coming on was usually from the kids, wasn't really Sharon or Ozzie's doing.

And this is I love this so much.

This puts a perfect picture in my mind.

He says, his fondest memory of being their neighbor was riding bikes with Sharon through Beverly Hills on the sidewalks, and she's towing Ozzy behind her in a wagon because of his balance problem, like a toddlers, like a toddler or a dog.

But the other neighbor the target of the ham which is my favorite Thomas Harris novel.

I mean, that's gonna be your next ep.

The target of the hand, the target, the target of the hams moving on the other neighbor.

The target of the ham was Greg Owen.

I did not recognize this name.

He had a big hit in eighty six call my Favorite Waste of Time.

And he told Heat magazine in two thousand and two that we were having a sing song, which already I'd hate him because he said that we were having a sing song of my new material in the back of my garden when Ozzie claimed I was playing it too loud, next minute, he started firing stuff over the wall.

Sharon's even wilder than he his, which yet duh.

He sold the house in two thousand and six, but the year the Osbournes went off the air, he should have stuck it out.

There's a wild conspiracy was his participation in the show simply jack up to real estate value.

Yes, exactly interesting, But he should have been counting his blessings because Sharon told The Guardian in two thousand and six that one of her favorite moves after getting into a fight with someone was to mail the offending party a Tiffany's Box, the distinctive, iconic, bright blue box that she had filled with her own poop.

People.

Jesus Christ, these people are vicious.

Do you do not want to get on the wrong side of these people?

I mean, there's the there's a famous tabloid story after Ozzie admitted to cheating on Sharon in like twenty sixteen twenty seventeen with a stylist named Michelle Pew Kelly basically docked this woman by tweeting out her private phone number.

So, yes, you don't want to piss these people off.

Yeah, that was real life.

Some things about the show were not.

I did not prepare any segues in advance of this, So you're you're getting the tail end of a work You're getting tail end of a workday segues from me.

You know, twenty years later, we know reality TV is mostly horseship.

But when the show ended In two thousand and six, Jack and Kelly talked to ABC and they really sort of blew the doors wide open on it.

They were like, so much of this was put together by MTV, particularly their famous meeting with a dog therapist, which Jack squarely said that was an MTV thing.

Kelly added, I put that in my contract that I will not do anything like that fucking dog therapist anyway.

First season.

In the books, the show is a hit.

It didn't just launch the careers of the Osbourne children, but it blew the doors wide open on reality TV.

According to The La Times, writing about Nielsen ratings in July two thousand and two, the Osborne's wound up as the highest rated cable series in MTV's twenty year history, averaging five point three million viewers during the first season and peaking at seven point two million viewers in the season finale.

Producer Nash told The Ringer the episode we did with professional skateboarder Jason Dill.

When that aired, twenty four percent of eighteen to fifty four year olds that owned TV sets were tuned in that night.

Fully a quarter of the country's main demographic was watching that show.

You know, one of the figures that I found as the family signed a seven million dollar agreement with Mirrmax for DVD video rights.

They won an Emmy Primetime Emmy in two thousand and two.

The second season premiere pooled six point six million viewers, which was up eighty four percent of the first I mean, this is the kind of stuff that TV execs pleasure themselves over.

I mean these days, I mean, how many Big Bang theories is that right now?

I mean, that's insane numbers?

What is that in episodes of Young Sheldon adjusted for inflation?

But you know, but it wasn't all.

Wasn't all flying hams and.

What hams come up must come down, But pigs wouldn't always fly for the Osbourns, just take what do you want?

We're spinning gold here.

Everything changed big time once the show aired.

Jack told the ringer it was really difficult to have a high school life, and that that's why I dropped out.

I just said, I'm gonna I'm going to go work in TV, which he did because school became a hindrance.

And again we mentioned this was sort of the wild West for reality TV.

The family also became guinea pigs, essentially for a new area of media aided celebrity stalking.

You know, Jack talks about how people would pause the show and zoom in and see phone numbers that he had written down on notepads.

People gave out his Aol instant messenger handle, which is an extremely dated reference.

He said he had to change his phone number every six months.

And you know the Star maps, the maps to the homes of the stars things that they have in La.

The Osborne's house was quickly added to one of those.

Sharon said, there were people outside our house every day.

It was like living in Disneyland.

And you know you mentioned earlier that their house was under construction when they started, so they didn't have a wall in their front yard, so they quickly had to add a wall to the front side of their property.

And Johnson said that became a source of entertainment for them too, because Ozzy had them at a sprinkler system that he could control remotely, so when people were trying to take pictures, he would squirt them with water and laugh, which is adorable.

Again, Ozzy, sweet boy from Birmingham.

We must protect him at all costs.

And one of my other favorite celebrity ankots for this Jack talks about being at the Emmys and he says Brad Pitt came up to him.

He says, quote, I was like sixteen in the green room and just eating some celery and he walks up to me.

He's like, hey man, Me and Jen because he was married to Jennifer Andison at the time.

Me and Jen watched you guys every night in bed.

We had our agents get us all the episodes.

Stars they're just like us.

But the first season was a high water mark that would not be reached again because, you know, the Osbourne's, as much as they ever were anonymous, now were really not anonymous.

None of them were.

I mean, they couldn't really go anywhere.

I think Sharon tell us this kind of adorable story about how I guess they used to go as a family to a drum circle in Venice Beach and they went, like I think a week after the first episode aired, like there was just only one episode out, and as they were walking down Venice Beach and all of a sudden, everybody's just turning and recognize them from this TV show, and they knew that things were going to be really different from them after that.

I think that was the moment when they realized that.

You know, this was something that was going to be life changing.

And for season two they were no longer naive, you know, I mean, they knew how the show would be cut together, and so they were a little more self aware, which you know, kind of spoiled the magic.

I love the idea.

I love the idea that in the biopic of the Osbourne's, like the moment when they lose their innocence is being not able to participate in a drum circle and Venice Beach anonymously.

It's it's set to like Samuel Barber's adagio for strings to like indicate the loss of innocence.

And like you see like Kelly sadly like carding her, jembe away, Jim just lackluster and hounding a talking drum, just all the color draining from their face.

Anyway, where's Peter Jackson on that?

We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment, a series of I can't even call the misfortun's true tragedies.

He felt the family in this period, Yeah, truly.

Sharon was diagnosed with colon cancer, which the show handled in an honest and respectful manner.

Sharon was very open about the diagnosis, but she picked up on the sense that the producers were treading lightly so that it didn't seem like they were exploiting this family crisis for ratings.

She later said, there was so much stuff they didn't show with that I think they thought it was too much.

But it didn't worry me because so many people get cancer.

It would have been something for younger kids to see that it's not a death sentence, that people do come out of it.

I thought was a cool take on it.

So she really wanted to be very open about her battle.

It's thought that the stress of Sharon's health scare contributed to Ozzie's relapsed during the second season of the show after many years sober.

And what's worse, it's thought that the strain of this family trauma exacerbated Jack and Kelly's burgeoning drug use.

Kelly, I guess been prescribed if I couldn't after she got her tonsils out at age thirteen, and this balloon didn't of serious dependency, and by her own emission, she was taking up to like fifty pills a day and sought treatment, and Jack did as well for an addiction to oxy cotton.

He sought treatment in two thousand and three as a very young man.

I think he was like seventeen or eighteen, and he's been sober ever since.

In fact, I think they both have so good for both of them.

Yeah, I mean, Stilson told Vice that when Sharon got cancer, Ozzie started using again and then the family became dysfunctional.

It was kind of tragic at a certain point when Ozzie was clearly taking drugs and the family kind of broke down as a result.

We should have stopped after season one.

It was ten great episodes.

Nash kind of echoes that he said Ozzie was having a little bit more trouble with either mismedication, which is a generous euphemism, or drinking or some combo of both, and we just weren't finding the comic gems, which is a pretty cold way of assessing that situation.

Yeah, not to totally excuse Ozzie's behavior, but I guess he'd fallen in with a doctor who was somewhat indulgent another euphemism.

There.

There was a Beverly Hills interness called doctor Kipper's is that vague enough that we won't get so they just call him doctor Kipper, and Ozzie was seeing him for substance abuse issues of all things.

And this doctor Kipper was later investigated for over prescribing medications to his famous clientele, and Ozzie's claimed that during filming of The ozz Bourns, Doctor Kipper provided him with up to thirteen different medications at once, which.

Led to him consuming forty two pills.

A day, which included valium, dexadrine, and adderall among numerous others.

Ozzie later said during the filming of the later episodes of the series, quote, I was wiped out on pills.

I couldn't talk, I couldn't walk, I could barely stand up.

I was lumbering about like the hunchback of Notre Dame.

It got to the point where I was scared to.

Close my eyes at night.

I was afraid I might not wake up.

And an investigation on this doctor Kipper revealed that he wasn't even certified in the medical field that he practiced, so I would imagine that he got shut down real quick.

But Rozzie, man, you stop even like having a scale of like that amount of drug taking.

What do they tell you to not take more than like two adavin or Oxy's or that stuff in a day?

Forty two?

I mean even grading on a curve for Ozzie, is that like a like a half pound of pills that you could hold in your you know, like those you see those sugar cube pyramids they make for like the content of like a coke.

What does forty two pills look like in a human being's hand.

I was just thinking of mic and ikes, but and you would, I mean, that's a lot.

Briefly we talked about like the Mirmax deal that was like a seven million dollar pay day for home video distribution rights.

But money was a big factor in pushing this show forward, and Kelly, it's pretty vocal about this, so I want to say admirably, Kelly admitted, perhaps admirably, her reasons for doing the show to ABC in two thousand and six.

I'm not afraid to say I only did this for the money, because after this I get to buy my own house, I get to move out, and I get to do what I want without having to live off my parents.

And I think that's the most gratifying thing ever.

All right, so I take back what I said.

That's good for her.

She wanted to get off the teat.

And what money there was, Jordan, Oh, such riches for the Osbournes.

This is really sad.

Five k per episode in season one.

That's crazy.

That's not even property taxes on that house.

That's I mean, that's a business deal from Don Arden's daughter.

Don Ardhram would be dangling people out of windows by their ankles.

Somebody came back with him with that kind of money.

He was rolling over it and rolling over in hell.

But they quickly rectified that because they made twenty million dollars for forty more episodes according to the La Times.

We talked about the Mirromax distribution deal, Kelly's music career such as it was.

But while we're talking about Osbourne's money, we have to talk about the Julian's auction.

There were six pairs of Ozzie's wirerimglasses that were sold at this one auction.

There was a set of two, four were sold separately.

Jordan, let's do a quick lightning round.

Let's do some prices right style, closest without going over what do you think Ozzie's wirerim glasses sold for let's do the set one before we do the set?

Were they tinted with blue?

Does not specify.

Okay, I'm going to say four thousand, five hundred.

Ooh, so far over?

Oh really well not actually, this is so deeply bizarre.

One pair sold for fifteen hundred, another pair sold for twenty seven hundred, a third pair sold for twenty eight hundred, and the set sold for thirty four hundred thirty four hundred.

All right, Lot number one hundred and fifty six a two thousand and two teen Choice Award surfboard.

Jordan, what is your answer?

I'm gonna say eight hundred and fifty dollars twelve fifty?

Wow?

Okay, yeah, Sharon's wig Lot number four hundred and seventy two about eight bucks close, two hundred and fifty.

Oh that's coal, that's like, okay, it is it is.

And lastly, and this is my a photograph of Jane Fonda, as Barbarella does not specify if it was signed.

Jordan, what do you think it went for?

Three hundred and fifty three hundred and twelve dollars and fifty second?

What over?

Damn it?

Oh boy?

Anyway, In their defense all that money went to Sharon's Colon cancer nonprofit, so very nice for them.

Anyway, what Ham goes up must come down, that is right.

Even though the money was still pouring in, by the end of the fourth season in two thousand and five, the show was on its last legs.

Executive producer Jeff Stilton was quoted in the Vice Oral History as saying, I don't know how we ultimately got fifty episodes out of it.

It was limping along at the end like a wounded animal, hemorrhaging.

Blood away with words.

I was gonna say, what a very ausy friendly analogy.

I feel like like a headless bat.

And that's when the family decided to go out on top.

Sharon later said it would have just 're at our family if we'd gone on forever, and she told our kids, this can't be your whole thing in life.

You can't just be a person that's filmed every day.

There's much more to who you are and what you want to do, which I feel like is a really strong, beautiful lesson that would very quickly be rendered obsolete by the next generation of reality stars and social media influencers who are filmed every day and there's not a whole lot more to who they are what they do.

But it's a very nice thought, Sharon, So thank you for that.

Sharon was never more wrong than that until she was.

But aside from providing the blueprint for an entire versioning genre of this rich family has the same weird dynamic as your poor one.

Shows like Gene Simmons Family, Jewels, Hogan Knows Best, and Keeping Up with the Kardashians were the direct spawn of this show.

Really, the Osbourne's also sent the family spiraling off into new and largely successful directions.

Jack became a television producer and star, including a show that he did with his day.

Kelly eventually transitioned away from music after lightning failing to strike once, and she is now a television personality.

Yeah, lightning didn't catch multiple times.

In case we do cut most of that, yeah, I go went off on a lengthy tension about Kelly Osbourne's music career and then asked me to cut it for fear that she would dox him, as she did with the stylist who Ozzie cheated on her mother with.

But you can look up the statistics.

They are out there and they are Grim, but she's been much more successful as an RN air personality.

She was on Fashion Police, Project, Runway Junior, and most recently and memorably, competed on The Masked Singer.

The Masked Singer.

Still I've still never seen that.

I still don't understand that.

I prefer to think of it as like a glitch in the matrix, like a machine just like knocked my head socket port, like slightly out of whack, and I've just like hallucinated it.

Sharon meanwhile launched a TV empire of her own.

She appeared as a judge on America's Got Talent X Factor.

She was a contestant of Celebrity Apprentice, and she was on the Talk for many years until she decided to And this is like, never get into a land war in Russia and never go to bat for Piers Morgan.

She was defending Piers Morgan going after Megan Markle and got into a heated exchange with her co host Cheryl Underwood.

It is some of the most awkward television I've ever seen in my life.

And we've just spent the last hour and a half talking about the Osborns.

Yeah, yeah, And she quit the show two weeks later after the incident.

It will presumably be costing CBS millions of dollars into the future.

I'm sure she got some kind of walking away money for that.

It was a real mess.

But the most important thing to come out of this is that, as of twenty twenty two, Ozzy has been sober for eight years.

Good for him.

We must protect Ozzy.

Black Sabbath was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in two thousand and six, for whatever that's worth.

And he's got a tour scheduled to start in May twenty twenty three because he is the Iron Man.

God love him.

Hell yes, God save Ozzy.

While we're on the topic of Ozzie keeping on trucking, there have been rumors about an Osbourne's reboot show.

This started way back in twenty fourteen, when Sharon promised that they would do to start filming something in early twenty fifteen, and Kelly was asked about it in the press and she says she was open to it, but it never materialized.

Some people have speculated that maybe doing this show again would be triggering for Ozzie's sobriety.

I'm not sure, but as of taping this episode, we are no closer doing Osbourne's family reunion, which is, let's face it, probably for the best.

The Osbourne's the show.

It's just a snapshot of a time, both for the family and also for us as a country.

There was a really interesting theory that Jack Osborne shared, and he attributes a major portion of the success of the show was because it debuted fairly soon after nine to eleven a few months later, and in this confusing time, people put on this show that was very clearly intended as escapism.

But as they watched this family that they assumed was absolutely nothing like their own, and the slightest they begin to have glimmers of self recognition.

And he said, in a way, this is a lot like our family.

And Jack says, I think that provided a weird sense of comfort and solidarity in a kind of heady way.

And he's also really grateful that the show exists, because he likens the episodes to the greatest home videos anyone could ever ask for.

All Right, well, that brings us to the end of the journey of the Osbourne's.

We've been musing on this for ninety minutes now.

It is still eminently bizarre to me that not only did Ozzy Osbourne go from semi washed up rock and roll wild man to America's wacky uncle from Across the Pond in one season of television for which he was dramatically underpaid.

But that family reshaped modern American television essentially in their image.

You know, Jordan, In the end, it really is Ozzy's crazy train and we're all just along for the ride.

Well, I think that's about all for the Osbourne's.

You know, I'm I'm tired, but it's a good kind of tired.

Thank you for tuning into too much information.

The forty two pills that Jordan took earlier today are finally kicking in, and like a ham launched by Sharon Osbourne across a fence, he's in low earth orbit now.

All right, folks, thanks for tuning in to too much information.

I'm Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan red Togg.

Thanks so much for listening.

Too Much Information was the production of iHeartRadio.

The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtogg.

The supervising producer is Mike Johns.

The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtogg and Alex Heigel.

With original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra.

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