Free Unbreakable: My New Autobiography by Sharon Osbourne Page A

the opportunity to help others – it totally messed with our heads.
    We were staying at the Trump International Hotel and had to be in front of Donald by bloody 7 a.m. each day. There was no time to wake up properly or even have a proper breakfast: a takeaway coffee and muffin in a bag were thrust into our hands to eat on the way.
    Sometimes we were working through until 1 a.m. then getting up again a few hours later, so it was punishing stuff. It seemed to me that they were deliberately wearing us down to make us vulnerable and tearful. I hated it, and throughout every last, soul-destroying second of doing it, I just thought of the money I would raise for my charity. Otherwise, it would have been hasta la bye-bye.
    Tasks included writing a radio commercial for a plumbing firm and designing the interior of an apartment. (I was thrilled to win that one!) I reached the final three out of fourteen, at which point we had to become a personal trainer for a day, getting people in and motivating them to do a workout. We literally had to pull members of the public off the street and persuade them to come and be filmed doing exercises, then call all the famous people we knew and get them to sponsor us. You had to raise money for every task, so it was hideously embarrassing having to ring your friends and put them on the spot by asking for donations. I hate asking people for money, even for charity. Hate it.
    For the first task we had to run a restaurant, and I got everyone I knew in New York to come along. God, it was hell. By the end of the series, I should think every time one of my friends saw my name flash up on their phone, they just switched the bloody thing off. Those who accidentally answered probably wanted to say ‘Fuck off’.
    I raised about $165,000 for the workout assignment, but Holly beat me by $50,000 because she found one big sponsor who came in at the last minute. Until that point, we were running neck and neck.
    When Donald fired me, he said it was because he didn’t feel I was strong enough for the next assignment, which was designing a new flavour for a Snapple drink, for fuck’s sake! But as I left that famous boardroom for the last time, all I could think was, Thank fuck for that, now I can go home.
    Even though I wanted to win it for my charity, it was tough because I didn’t want that to mean that Holly would lose out on raising money for hers. It was a truly invidious situation. Her father has Parkinson’s disease and her teenage son has autism, so she set up the HollyRod Foundation to offer help to families living with those conditions. The two finalists were Holly and Bret Michaels of the band Poison. Bret is lovely, and I adore him, but he got very sick after we had filmed all the challenges and returned home complaining of a severe headache. He suffered a brain haemorrhage, and was in hospital for several days before returning to New York to film the finale, when he won a huge amount of money for his chosen charity, the American Diabetes Association.
    On camera during the finale Donald said that he had spoken to Bret’s doctors. ‘They didn’t want you to be here tonight. At all. Believe me, not at all. Are you risking your life being here? This is a lot of pressure.’ Quick as a shot Bret came back, ‘Lately it seems like me just standing up is risking my life.’
    I knew just how he felt. Once again, I had said yes to something because I thought people might think badly of me if I didn’t do it, and once again I regretted it. Still, at least this time I could console myself that it was for charity and that I would surely go to heaven.
    If I can only stop fucking swearing.
     
    If reality shows are the most life-sapping way to earn a crust in show business, then filming adverts must surely rank as the easiest. It’s big money, they usually take only one or two days to film and, if the premise and script are good, they don’t damage your reputation. They might even enhance it.
    The Super