Sharon Osbourne backtracks on her claims she sacked assistant following a house fire
Sharon Osbourne has said she didn't sack an assistant following a house fire after originally stating that she had done such a thing in an admission which sparked a backlash.
In an appearance on Would I Lie To You? which aired last month, Osbourne claimed she had fired the unnamed assistant for not finding the situation funny when she had instructed him to rescue paintings from the house.
However, she has now changed her version of the story, as the 67-year-old said on US show The Talk that it was "a joke" and he had actually been given the boot years later.
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She shared: "I told a true story about a fire I had in my house. He went in, he got the paintings out. And then, just to be precocious, I said at the end of this little thing I was doing, 'Oh, and then I fired him.'
"It was a joke because I was on a comedy show. I fired him about 15 years later."
When she originally told the story on the BBC channel show hosted by Rob Brydon, she said she had told the assistant to go into the burning house to get the family's dogs and paintings out.
Osbourne told the panellists that when the emergency services arrived to provide oxygen for him, she ordered him to go back into the house to get more paintings and gave his oxygen mask to her dog.
She went on: "After this terrible night, he was not talking to me. Ozzy and I were recounting everything, we were laughing and laughing, and [the assistant] said, 'I don't see what's funny about any of this.' He said, 'I think I'm going to have damaged lungs.'
"I mean, please. So then I just said, 'If you don't think that's funny, do you think this is funny? You're fired.'"
While the audience and other guests and hosts on the show laughed, Osbourne was criticised by some viewers.