Topics: Sharon Osbourne, Reality TV, Celebrity
For many of us, our constant exposure to reality TV has normalised growing up in the spotlight and having every choice immortalised on screen.
Before we had The Kardashians, Real Housewives or Selling Sunset, there was a reality TV show so unfiltered and chaotic it had viewers hooked and is now resurfacing all over TikTok as people swoon with nostalgia or watch moments of the drama unfold for the very first time.
Rather than being centred around polished celebrities or entrepreneurs, it was focused entirely on the life of a rock star and his family.
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The Osbournes was a reality show chronicling the every day life of Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne, his wife Sharon, and their children.
Iconic scenes featured their daughter Kelly and son Jack as they bickered with their parents and navigated getting older in a rock’n’roll household in the heart of Los Angeles.
The show crashed onto screens via MTV all the way back in 2002 - and was a huge hit with viewers who couldn’t get enough of the outrageous family. It ran for four seasons, providing more moments of disbelief than we can count.
They gave us unfettered access to their lives and family dynamic, something which was shocking at the time.
As viewers felt like they had a complete understanding of the Osbournes, it may come as a surprise to some that the family wasn’t just Ozzy, Sharon, Kelly and Jack after all.
The Osbournes actually had another child - Aimee - who chose not to take part in the show and whose photo was often blurred out from scenes entirely.
Aimee is their eldest child but moved out from the family home at just 16 years old before filming started.
She told The Independent in 2020: “I still felt I was trying to figure out who I was in the chaos of family life.
“So why on earth would I want that portrayed on television? I wanted to protect myself, my parents, my siblings, too. They were very young, very impressionable”, she explained.
Aimee is now the lead singer of band ARO, and thanks her parents for helping her break into the industry.
“My parents overheard me kind of singing in my room. It was a friend of my parents who said, 'Oh, you should come and stay with me and work with some producers and see what happens',” she recounted.
Sharon, who we can currently watch on ITV1 as she stars in Celebrity Big Brother, has opened up about the absence of Aimee on the OG reality show and the pain she felt when her eldest daughter moved out.
Sharon told The Talk: “She felt too that she didn't want to grow up on camera.”
Further explaining her daughter’s choice, she stated plainly: “She hated the idea — it was appalling to her. And so she left at 16 and I regret every day that she did. It broke my heart when she moved."
Despite Aimee declining to appear on The Osbournes, in her adult life she has made a few appearances as herself on docuseries such as Behind the Music and Intimate Portrait.
So there we have it.
Whilst Sharon might only be back on our screens for a short time, maybe we’ll learn even more about the infamous family.
