Just too extreme…

I tried, I really tried, to finish Sharon Osbourne’s autobiography Extreme. After all I had enjoyed Life with the Osbournes on TV and felt some sympathy for Ozzie’s problems with the remote - I can’t work the blasted things either.
But this book really lives up to its title - by the time I got to the part where Ozzie chews the head off a dove (which he had intended to release as a symbol of peace and love!) and spits it into the lap of some unfortunate girl, I had had enough. Sharon had already excused a slew of bad behaviour, such as Ozzie defecating in inappropriate places (such as a hotel guest’s shoe) and her own problems holding her water, and whether it was the 70s or not, I just couldn’t take any more.
I am sure Sharon Osbourne is a great raconteur, and she might even have me laughing if she told these stories in person (although I would make sure my shoes were well out of the way) but the book is written as if she were regaling drunk dinner guests, splattered with expletives (most of them unnecessary but they do pad the word count) and it just doesn’t come across as very funny.
Instead, it sounds whiny and hysterical, and where she tries to excuse what was going on (like killing the dove) she made me recoil from the page. There is also an irritating snobbishness, such as when she meets Ozzie’s first wife and concludes they have nothing in common because Sharon shops at Dior. Well, dang me. Even her own mother gets the “we have nothing whatsoever in common” treatment, which is a bit harsh because I’m sure they at least have the day of Sharon’s birth in common.
I really wanted to like this book - on TV, the Osbournes came across as a scatty but likeable mob. But this book does a poor job of reinforcing that impression. Now it turns out I may be in surprisingly good company - apparently Ozzie can’t finish it either.

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