Shock for X Factor
SHARON Osbourne says she has finally forgiven her mum – after learning how she’d had “one hell of a childhood” mired in poverty.
The X Factor favourite was estranged from the woman who brought her into the world, Hope, and didn’t go to her funeral.
But she was stunned to learn she was arrested at the age of 12 after being caught shop-lifting with her own mum.
Hope and Sharon’s grandmother, Dolly, were kept in cells for two nights and pleaded guilty to theft in 1929.
The star uncovered the dark family secret while researching her heritage for BBC series Who Do You Think You Are?
Finding out about her mum’s hard start to life, Sharon got emotional reading a clipping from a local newspaper about the case.
The article reveals that when the pair were arrested in Brixton, South London, Hope made a desperate plea to police and begged: “I will take all the blame if you will let Mummy go.” Former X Factor judge Sharon, 66, says: “Oh my God. That is just heartbreaking.”
The pair stole two pairs of stockings and “other articles” worth eight shillings and fourpence – 42p in today’s money.
It is thought Dolly was bringing Hope up as a single parent at the time and Sharon is convinced they shoplifted out of desperation.
She said: “To have two kids, a husband gone, it must have been really hard. I wonder if they were stealing for Christmas gifts.”
Turbulent
Sharon, whose husband is Black Sabbath rocker Ozzy, 70, visited the old nick where her mum and grandma were held in Lambeth – now a Buddhist centre.
After stepping into one of the cells, she admits: “You’d just be traumatised, wouldn wouldn’t t you? Stuck in here as a little kid.”
The revelation opened old wounds for Sharon because cause her relationship with her mother was so turbulent she refused fused to go to Hope’s funeral eral when she died in 1998.
“I didn’t like my mother at all,” she e admitted once.
“I think there was an underlying love, but there was no friendship, nothing at all, we didn’t l i ke each h other.”
Sharon, mum to Jack, ck, 33, Kelly, 34, and Aimee, mee, 35, became emotional as she reflected on the misery y Hope endured.
Holding an old snap, p, she said: “I feel a pain in my heart art looking at my mum’s little face in this photo. h
“She’s just a sweet innocent thing holding on to her mum really tight.
“She must have had one hell of a childhood with no father, her mother was working… growing up and not having the comfort of your parents.
“My heart really does break for her. It gives me a sense of why she was the way she was.”
Hope became a dancer and married Sharon’s dad Don Arden, renowned as a ruthless rock agent who managed Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Black Sabbath and the Electric
Light
Orchestra.
Sharon didn’t spea speak to her father for 20 years after she took over Ozzy’s management. They reconciled before his death in 2007.
Sharon has also developed a newfound sense of respect for her grandmother, who she said frightened her as a child.
In Who Do You Think You Are? she learns about Dolly’s struggles, bringing up Hope on her own while husband James served overseas in the Royal Artillery in Egypt.
Sharon said: “I knew my grandmother, not well. I have a whole new respect for her now.