9

DEAR LONDON

You have always been my true home. That is why when I was nineteen, I decided to move back to you to live on my own. That was also when I really fell head over stiletto heels in love with the city. The next few years that I lived there were some of the happiest of my life, and moving back was probably one of the best decisions I ever made.

It was also one of the toughest because it was the first time that I had ever left my family behind. At the time, the Osbournes TV show had ended and Mum’s cancer was in full remission.

After spending so much time looking after someone else, I knew it was time to look after me, and I knew I needed to get away. I’d been so focused on being a daughter that I’d neglected being a person, and while I don’t regret that for one second, I knew that is no way to spend the rest of my life. I had to claim my independence. I needed to make my own mistakes and figure out who I was outside my family, and time to just be whatever the fuck it was I thought I wanted to be. Also, I needed to find a way to stop self-medicating.

Painkillers had become my crutch, as they don’t only kill your physical pain; they kill your mental pain, too. After a few years of using them to stun my misery, I was a full-blown addict and knew that I would have a much harder time getting Vicodin in England because at that time, medication like that was not available outside of a hospital. Addicts in the UK were different as a result of that inaccessibility. There, people would go from drinking to shooting heroin because they couldn’t get their hands on anything in between. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, or that I had any intentions of going stone-cold sober, just that I thought that moving to London would put some distance between me and the drugs I’d become dependent on—otherwise known as my DOC**—so off I went.

TRANSLATION

DOC

Drug of choice

My two childhood best friends, Sammy and Fleur, lived in London, and I also knew people like Kate Moss and Lee Starkey. London is a very tight-knit city, so with just two childhood mates to go to the pub with and a few acquaintances to invite me out, it soon felt like I knew everyone. For the first time ever, I had a group of friends of my own who didn’t know my family. If people expected me to be a twat, all it took to win them over was the fact that I wasn’t. People have a much better bullshit detector in London, so it wasn’t hard to make mates. They saw me for me, and because of that, I started to see myself that way as well.

One of the best friends I made was Omar, who came over to my first apartment, a sublet in St. John’s Wood, one night with my friend Margot. I was tripping on ecstasy that must have been cut with acid, because I was wearing a classic yellow raincoat and making snow angels on the floor of my flat,** thinking I was covered with water in my own apartment. I looked at Omar and said, “It’s raining.” He must have thought I was batshit crazy, but not crazy enough to leave, and he basically moved in that night and never left.

TRANSLATION

Flat

Apartment

Mews house

House or apartment that is a converted stable

Shortly thereafter, we moved into a new place. It was a mews house** with three stories. My bedroom was on the top floor, there were two spares on the second floor, and the kitchen and living room were on the first. Extra space meant room for extra people, and when I found out that friends of mine were recording an album and trying to find a place to live off the measly allowance of five pounds a day per person from their record company, I invited them to come stay at mine. Having a whole band sleeping in the living room was completely normal for someone who’d grown up on a tour bus. Unlike the dysfunctional family I’d grown up with, this ragtag group of assholes became the dysfunctional family I chose. Over the years, if you were my friend, it became known that if you were in town, you had a place to stay and that place was mine. I had everyone from Naomi Campbell, artist Alex Prager, designer Kim Jones, Amy Winehouse, John Galliano, the Like, and various other bands stay with me.

People always assume that us Osbournes were trust-fund kids, but that could not be further from the truth. From day one, Mum and Dad made it very clear that we had to be self-sufficient and that they would not support us after a certain age. Lucky enough for me, I have been self-sufficient since I was fifteen. I had to pay my mortgage, so I had to keep working. Sometimes that went well—I was the youngest person to ever play Mama Morton in Chicago on the West End** and got my first TV fashion gig as the host of Project Catwalk.

TRANSLATION

West End

The Broadway of London

Other times it didn’t go as well. I hosted a radio show for the BBC called The Sunday Night Surgery, took lots of various TV hosting gigs, and got fired a lot. I showed up to work hungover, I was late, or I would think that I could sneak out a few hours early, forgetting that without my chatting, someone would go, “It’s gone a bit quiet in here, hasn’t it? Wait . . . Where the fuck is Kelly?!” I once even got written up at the BBC for showing up to work in my pajamas too many times, even though it was radio and my show aired from eleven to midnight. I also got written up another time for talking about pizza too much while on the air.

Before you write me off as some entitled prick who couldn’t hold a job, let me remind you that I was twenty years old! Find me a twenty-year-old who doesn’t think it’s more fun to hang out with her friends than go to work. And yes, maybe I got there a few (or forty) minutes late, or left a few (or ninety) minutes early, but no matter what state I was in, I showed up and I was always prepared.

The worst instance of this was when my family and I hosted the Brit Awards in 2008. I’d gotten the schedule wrong and thought I only had to show up at eight A.M. for rehearsal, and that after that, I’d get a few hours to sleep it off in my dressing room. After being out all night with the Klaxons, I showed up at eight A.M. to find out that this wasn’t just a rehearsal and there was no downtime—it was show time from the minute I walked in.

The whole day felt like having food poisoning in a place where you can’t take a shit. I started to have cold sweats and panic, wondering how I was going to get through the day, while simultaneously being terrified that my parents would see right through me. Even though I am far from what you would call religious, I found myself bargaining with God: “Dear God, if you just let me get through this day alive and without puking in front of a live audience, I promise I’ll never drink again . . .” Then I gave up on bothering to ask God to save me and just started praying for him to kill me, swiftly and suddenly. I felt faint and started to realize that the only way I would get through it was the hair of the dog.

What I realized in moments like this, when I was forced to compensate for the fact that I felt like dog shit on the inside by being extra professional on the outside, was that I was actually somehow pulling it off and truly being professional. Which was exactly the case that day. I tried to keep it together, but anyone backstage who had been with me the night before would point and laugh, reminding me of my misery—as if it were even possible to forget. This all went on as I sat next to my mother under a blinding spotlight, squinting to read the teleprompter. To this day, I don’t know how my mum didn’t pick up on what was going on.

By the time the awards show was over, I’d been awake for almost forty-eight hours, and it was the first time in my life I’d ever pulled a proper all-nighter. Once the show ended, I made it to the after party for long enough to finally have that one drink, and then I went straight home, where my roommates were just rallying to go out.

Whenever I had to work, I’d call home to my roommates about twenty times during the day to see what I was missing out on. More than likely, they would be asleep, but on the day of the Brit Awards, I was seeking moral support for the state I had managed to get myself in. Whenever I got paid, the whole house was excited, because my having money meant we were all going out that night with whatever was left over after paying the bills.

Aside from Omar, it was Jay, who managed one of the bands that lived with me, who exhibited any sense of responsibility. They were the only two, aside from me, who ever cleaned. On the rare occasion that we decided to stay in, Omar would cook, but it took so bloody long that by the time he finished, we were all mullered.** No one ended up eating except for me because (a) Omar’s cooking was amazing, and (b) I never turn down a good meal.

TRANSLATION

Mullered

Wasted

About once a week or so, one of us would have the grand idea to have a movie night. “Oh, we’re going to stay in and watch Overboard,” we’d say when we invited everyone over, and then it never, ever happened. I can’t remember a single night that we stayed in.

There was always something enticing happening in London. Like a party in Shoreditch where Björk was playing on the roof of a garage, where I got split off from everyone and somehow spent the whole night hanging out with a lady named Shoplifter, who made all Björk’s wigs, and Björk herself. Who would have wanted to miss all that?

There was no such thing as a regular night for us, but we did have a few regular haunts. The Columbia Hotel had a somewhat glamorous reputation because that was where bands used to stay back in the day. You’d always run into Canadian or Japanese tourists in the hallway, desperately seeking rock stars, but to me, the Columbia was a first-rate shithole.

To get a drink, you’d go downstairs and ring a bell, and an old woman would come from around the corner in an apron. It would go something like this:

“Well, what do you want?” she’d ask, while giving you a look like she’d prefer you just die right there and then.

“Please may I have a vodka cranberry and orange and a packet of crisps?”**

TRANSLATION

Packet of crisps

Bag of potato chips

Her disdain for my politeness only made her yearn all the more for my imminent death. She would slam a cup down on the counter and put one single ice cube in it, if I was lucky. It was always only one single cube, like ice was some luxury that had to be rationed. By the time she finished pouring, the beverage was still warm as fuck, with a little water for good measure, thanks to how fast that one ice cube melted before I even took the first sip.

The Columbia was aptly named, because back then the amount of cocaine consumed there was probably keeping several cartels in business. It was the first place I’d ever seen people do coke right out in the open. The hotel was closing soon for renovations, and I guess people took that as license to cease giving any fucks at all, when there weren’t that many given in the first place.

The new hotel that rose to take its place was in Shepherd’s Bush, the K West. To me, it was also a miserable shithole, although it gave the illusion that it was grand by the choice of décor. As my father always says, “You can’t paint a turd white. It’s still a turd.” The whole place always smelled like a swimming pool, probably from all the bleach they used to swab it down. One of the rooms we once stayed in had a bullet hole in the window. However, the K West was close to Heathrow and the BBC TV studios, so bands would stay there when they came to town, and inevitably, we’d end up there as well. We actually didn’t know any better—we thought it was really posh at the time.

Some nights we would find ourselves in random situations, like when we ended up at the Pogues’ front man Shane MacGowan’s birthday party at the Boogaloo, where he slept through the entire thing and someone had set up a velvet rope around him like he was some sort of museum exhibition. I’ll give the guy a break, as it was his birthday, and call it performance art. When the birthday cake came out for him, he woke up just long enough to punch it and then smash it all over his face. I guess he had a happy birthday.

TRANSLATION

Tesco

A big grocery store chain in the UK

Weird in a good way was when you’d find a handwritten flyer in Notting Hill that just read “TESCO** DISCO TONIGHT.” Tesco Disco was fucking legendary, even though it was just someone’s flat next to a Tesco, where the bartender made you drinks at the kitchen table. It would open up after all the pubs had closed and was eventually shut down by the police, which was no surprise to anyone, since everything about it was illegal.

In my scene, there were a few people who did smack, but they were so strung-out that my heart was always breaking for them. There were also more than a few people who did cocaine, which ended up on the List of Banned Substances for Kelly by my friends, because it would only make me tired, or “boring,” as they’d put it. You would always hear someone yelling, “Don’t give any to Kelly. She’ll just fall asleep!”

The funny thing is that I don’t even recall ever asking for coke. Plus, the first thing you have to do after snorting a line is take a shit, and taking a shit at a someone else’s house or a club is definitely not a party trick.

We were always at Bungalow 8, which was a tiny spot tucked inside the St Martins Lane Hotel and down a steep set of stairs. I was always falling on my ass going down those stairs, but I would just get back up and carry on. I wasn’t the only one—at least four times a night, you’d hear a scream, followed by a series of thuds, and know exactly what had just happened.

Most of my mates lived in Camden, and even though that wasn’t my neighborhood, the Hawley Arms became my local. It was a bit of a shithole, but the best kind of shithole—when you had to go for a wee, you’d get the key and go up to the owner’s apartment, which was right above the bar. My friends and I were always the only people in there and could do whatever we wanted. Amy Winehouse was our mischievous ringleader. If Amy said to do something, people would do it, and she’d easily convince someone to let us have a lock in after closing hours, or step behind the bar to start serving drinks herself.

The paps are ruthless in England, and I was often with people they considered prime prey, like Kate Moss, Amy, Nick Grimshaw, or Alexa Chung. In California, there are laws that the paparazzi have to stay several yards away from you, but in London, you’re fair game. Often, they’d work in teams and chase you down on motocross bikes. One would come right in front of you and start flashing the camera in your face so you couldn’t see what was happening, and the other would duck in front so they could get a shot up your skirt.

We didn’t understand why they always seemed to know where we were going before we’d even get there—or why stories that seemed fabricated contained one true detail—but it all made sense later when we found out that News of the World was hacking everyone’s phone. This also explained the time I was at Grimmy’s house when someone knocked on the door to tell us he thought we were being hacked. Sure enough, across the street was a bloke sitting in his car on a laptop. Not strange at all, right? When we decided to walk by and have a look at what he was doing, he switched the screen to porn as soon as we got close.

If it was getting too hectic to be out, we’d go to Club Kitchen—which meant going to someone’s flat or house and just hanging out in their kitchen. Often, we’d race back to mine, where the gate meant that the paparazzi had to at least keep some distance and couldn’t creep right up to the door. This resulted in a few unintentional slumber parties, because if they saw us go in, they’d camp out and wait for us to emerge. Everyone would spend the night to make sure we weren’t giving them what they wanted.

The next day, we’d have a good laugh at the reporting of the drug-fueled night of partying that had happened at my place, because the reality was that we’d stayed up till dawn reenacting episodes of Will & Grace after Omar had printed out the scripts off the Internet.

TRANSLATION

Fuck all

Absolutely nothing

The jobs I did have always paid very late, and all my mates were in bands and didn’t have fuck all,** either, so many of our plans were dictated by where we thought we could get free drinks. When no one was having a party or we couldn’t find a bartender we knew, we’d get creative. One such scheme that I invented involved me taking one of the awards I had won and shoving it into my largest handbag, as if I had just won the award that night and we were celebrating. Someone would always offer to buy us a round of drinks, we’d take it, thank them profusely, then head on to the next pub to continue our manipulative celebration.

As you may know, there are no dollar bills in London—only pound coins. What is considered pocket change in the US could be as much as twenty quid in the UK. At some point in the night, we’d all dig through our pockets and pool our money in the center of the table to see if we had enough to get a bite at Wagamama. Upon reflection, I wish I hadn’t been too proud to just ask my parents for money, if I was really that hungry for food.

I never went so far as to feel normal, but these few years in London were the most free I’ve ever felt. This was pre-Uber, and black cabs in London were so expensive. Public transportation became my best friend. I got everywhere by taking the tube and the bus, just like every other Londoner, and I had tube maps and bus routes memorized.

TRANSLATION

Addison Lee

The original taxi company in the UK, otherwise known as “Addy Lee”

Regardless of what mode of transportation we used to get somewhere, our feet almost always took us home. Inevitably, no matter how much we’d planned not to, my mates and I would miss the last tube or bus. Due to the number of people in our group, Addison Lee** was not an option, and we’d have to walk to our next destination. Omar almost always led the way. He knew the backstreets and shortcuts of London better than most cabbies. He could turn a half-hour walk into ten minutes by cutting through some alley, but he also always made everyone walk at his pace. By the time we’d get to wherever we were going, I’d be clammy and sweaty and have to duck into the loo to redo my hair and makeup. On some nights, if we got really desperate, we’d take a bicycle tuk-tuk, which always made me have an attack of guilt. Is this really bad that we’re paying someone to pedal us home? I’d ask myself, as the guys next to me laughed and screamed and didn’t think anything of it. Is this slave labor?

That was such a special time for me in London, but I think it was a rare and special time in general, and I’m so thankful I got to be a part of it. Almost all my friends were in bands or involved in music, and on any given night, we’d go see the Arctic Monkeys, the Horrors, the Klaxons, the Libertines, the Rascals, Amy, or any number of people who were truly talented. These were bands who were very young, played their own instruments, were writing their own music—that was good!—and weren’t manufactured, and this kind of scene hadn’t happened in London in a very long time. We didn’t know it was anything unusual, though—it was just our lives. We were just kids trying to establish our friendships and figure out what to do next.

I remember once talking to Princess Beatrice in the powder room at one of Elton John’s parties, and she told me how she’d gotten grounded for taking the tube. Everyone who has to take the tube in London hates it, but that was all she wanted to do: buy a ticket and take a ride like everyone else out there.

This is why I’m so thankful for my time in London. I didn’t always go to bed happy, but I almost always woke up that way, excited about my life rather than hating it. I still wasn’t totally sober, and I still fucked up all the time, but the mistakes that I was making were 100 percent mine. I can look back at that time and own up to the fact that I was irresponsible and an asshole, and rather than blaming someone else for my behavior, I know it was all me. I’m grateful that I got a chance to get it out of my system. Rather than feeling trapped by who I was, I started to appreciate it. I still didn’t completely like myself in those years, but I was starting to think that maybe someday I would . . .

Love,

Kelly O