Free Fierce by Kelly Osbourne

Everyone was stopping and watching us. It was really embarrassing.
    ‘“Now, Jack! Now, Jack.” Jack would whip out his gun and squirt some innocent woman out shopping.’
    Aimee turned to Mum and said, ‘Why is Tony Curtis calling you a nigger fucker, Mum?’ The man in question really looked like the Hollywood actor Tony Curtis, who was a friend of Mum’s.
    I was too busy thinking, ‘Oh my God. That is the most disgusting thing I have ever heard anyone say. How can they say that? How can they use the N word?’
    My mum just grabbed us all and hurried us along into a shop. When we got back to the hotel Mum was forced to admit that it was her father, Don Arden, who had been calling her those nasty words.
    We had a grandfather. Mum had always told us that our grandparents were dead. Whenever I would ask her what they were like or what they did, she would just brush it off and change the subject. Most of the time she said they weren’t alive any more. We believed her. Why wouldn’t we? It’s so strange how unaffected I was and still am about my mum’s father. Jack and I really didn’t care. It didn’t mean anything to us. The most shocking thing to me and Jack was the language that had come out of his mouth.
    Back at the hotel, my mum asked us if we wanted to meet our grandfather. I thought, I’ve not had him in my life for fourteen years, I don’t know a lot about him apart from the bad stuff, and I know that there must have been a very good reason for my mum to want to keep him away from us. So I thought, I’ll leave it at that.
    I did meet him once. He came over for food at our house. I never called him ‘Grandad’. I hardly spoke to him. I didn’t give a shit – he was just some old man.
    I ’VE been a victim of people being mean about me on the internet and it isn’t nice. Being in the public eye has meant that I’ve had to get used to people writing blogs about me that are not always flattering. But one thing I have learned is that with the introduction of Facebook and Twitter, we’re all susceptible to things being written about us that we don’t like. I do use Facebook and when I started dating my boyfriend, Luke Worrall, all sorts of girls were writing mean things about me on his page. That hurt.
    What is cyberbullying? This is when someone uses technology, e.g. the internet or a mobile phone to deliberately hurt, humiliate, harass, intimidate or threaten someone else.
    Examples include:
Sending nasty or threatening texts or emails.
Posting abusive messages online – on a social networking site, in a chatroom, or using IM.
Posting humiliating videos or pictures online, or sending them on to other people.
Taking on someone else’s identity online in order to upset them.
Bad-mouthing and spreading rumours.
Setting up a hate site or a hate group on a social-networking site.
Prank calling, prank texts and messages.
    reproduced with kind permission of CyberMentors

    Some cyberbullying is done just for a laugh or cheap joke, but that doesn’t make it any less painful for the recipient. According to the CyberMentors website there is growing evidence that many young people don’t take being online that seriously and hide behind anonymous profiles.
    In 2007, YouTube introduced the first anti-bullying channel for youth, Beatbullying, engaging the assistance of celebrities to tackle the problem. They are on Bebo, MySpace and Flickr, and have a Facebook group.
    Beatbullying is the UK’s leading bullying-prevention charity – their aim is to work towards ‘a world where bullying and child-on-child violence are unacceptable’.
    CyberMentors is a part of a new Beatbullying initiative. It’s the first peer-mentoring social-networking site run by young people to help and assist their peers both off and online.
    CyberMentors
    Beatbullying
    Units 1 + 4
    Belvedere Road
    London
    SE19 2AT
    ☎ 0208771 3377
     [email protected]
    www.cybermentors.org.uk
    www.beatbullying.org
    Years later, Mum made her