It was pretty nearly exactly 19 years ago, and amid quite a frenzied press scrum, that I first interviewed Sharon Osbourne. Truly it was another time. The X Factor — an ITV talent competition, I explained to Times readers — was reaching the climax of its sensational first season, its cancellation a comfortable 14 years ahead. As its sole female judge at the time, Osbourne had, I wrote, spent the autumn displaying the tough love she had already advertised on The Osbournes, the mischievously edited MTV reality sitcom that had made her almost as famous as her eternally erring husband, the wobbly, bat-munching rocker Ozzy Osbourne, an unmanageable man she had already spent more than two decades managing.
Different times, I say — so
