Kelly Osbourne: Oh, you little devil

Dad is a bat-biting, drug-addict rock star. Mum dresses like Morticia Addams and makes headmistresses cry. Nanny shut her in a cupboard, and brother Jack has a tendency to shoot her in the leg. Meet 18-year-old Kelly Osbourne, the world's favourite dysfunctional daughter

Off, then, to a London hotel, to meet Kelly Osbourne, who is over here promoting her first album, "How I Love to Crochet On Summer Evenings After I Have Straightened the Antimacassars". (Smashing video. Lots of antimacassars.) Hey, only teasing. It's called Shut Up. (Lots of loud stomping. Alas, no antimacassars.) I'm led to the room where we are to have the interview. Kelly isn't in here, but there is evidence that she has been in here. There's a plate with a greasy mound of leftover ketchup-smeared chips on it.

So, Kelly, I ask when she arrives moments later, you've not been persuaded to aim for the frighteningly in-vogue teen anorexic look yet? Not been persuaded to live on Evian and the occasional radish? (Peeled, obviously, as most of the calories are in the skin.) "No way," she says. "Fuck off." Speak your mind, I say. "I will!" she says. She adds that she was once asked to wear a skimpy midriff top for a teen-magazine shoot. "And I was, like: 'I think you've neglected to notice that I'm fat. I'm not wearing that.'"

There is much to worship about Kelly O, but I'm particularly taken with her diet, which appears to be so without virtue it's almost blissful. Can you cook, Kelly? "I can make really good guacamole." That's not cooking, I say. That's avocado mashing. Anything else? "Nope. That's it. Mum can't cook either. When we first moved into our house she decided she would cook, and we had turkey dinosaurs with Bird's Eye potato waffles every night and then she bought, like, these turkey meatballs with garlic butter in the middle and she left them in the oven too long and they split open and the butter caught fire. We had to call the fire brigade." This is one of the things I love about the Osbournes. They don't need a drama to turn it into a full-blown crisis. They only need a turkey meatball.

Today, Kelly is wearing a lovely Laura Ashley pinafore, frilly-collared shirt, pearls and Alice band. Hey, only teasing again. (Get a grip.) No, she is wearing a pinstripe pencil skirt with zips all over it and a pair of marvellous, high-heeled, glossy red peep-toe shoes, all from Topshop. She's just been on a spree at Topshop. She could go to Gucci or Prada or Chanel, "but what would be the point, as I can go to them anytime in LA?" She is, actually, extremely cute, with her thick, dark bonnet of gothic hair, the sweet pot belly every teenage girl should (by law) have, wonderful skin – "I get it from my mum. She's got really good skin. My brother and sister have really bad skin" – and amazingly good legs. I compliment her on her legs. She won't have it. "I hate my legs. I've got cuts everywhere. From falling over. And see this white scar? I got shot." By whom? "Jack." Doh! Like I needed to ask. She says Jack, her younger brother, is actually less crazed than he used to be. "The therapy has helped. He's less violent and more motivated to do stuff." Are you in therapy, Kelly? "God, no. I tried it once and hated it. I can give myself better advice."

I bet she can. And does. She appears not only absolutely to know herself, and her mind, but also absolutely to like herself as she is, which is quite something. If she is fast becoming a sort of anti-Britney, anti-Christina teen icon – "They can both kiss my fat ass," she once famously said – I think it can only be good news, frankly. I ask if she minds when people are rude about her, as they often are. "I don't give a stuff," she says. OK, who has been most rude about you recently? "That bloke who manages Westlife." Louis Walsh? "He's been horrible. He wrote this review of my single and instead of just saying: 'I don't like it. It's not my cup of tea,' he said: 'I hate Kelly Osbourne.' He probably used the word 'hate' towards me six times. He doesn't know me. If he knew me and said he didn't like me and hated me, that's fine. But he's never even met me. He's just a 60-year-old idiot who writes the most ridiculous songs on earth."

I wonder about her vulnerability. You can't be 18 and totally invulnerable, can you? I think I glimpse it just once, when she talks about her boyfriend of the last eight months, someone called "Bert" who is, apparently, lead singer with a band called The Used. "I never realised how dramatic relationships are," she says. Kelly, you've been shot in the leg by your own brother. I'd have assumed you'd be well used to how dramatic relationships are. "Yeah, but... it's like you are both wondering what the other is thinking, and you don't ask. So many little games..." Suddenly, she looks like the child she still is. Suddenly, she looks as if she should be wearing an Alice band.

I don't think Kelly is expert at playing "little games". Indeed, when I ask her why she thinks MTV's The Osbournes has been such an addictive, worldwide hit, she says: "I think it's because we don't sugar-coat anything. We are just honest. That's refreshing to people because they are so sick of people being fake." I'm sure she has a point. Ozzy, Sharon, Kelly, Jack. Spoiled, bonkers, sulky, fractious, utterly weird (I still can't get out of my head the image of Jack playing a computer game in full military regalia) and all knocking about in a huge LA house full of dogs pooing everywhere. But if they are dysfunctional (and who isn't?), at least they are openly and honestly dysfunctional. You know American Beauty, where everything is lovely on the surface but hideous underneath? Well, they're sort of "Anglo-American Ugly", where everything appears grotesque on the surface but might be quite sound underneath.

That said, though, I'm not sure about the incident where Sharon, in a row with the neighbours, threw an entire rotten ham over the hedge. And then there is Kelly's relationship with her older sister, Aimee, who refused to be filmed for The Osbournes and is the "real singer" in the family, the one who has been taking singing lessons for years. She must be sick with envy. "She's a bitch, to tell you the truth," she says. "We don't have a relationship, it's really sad. She doesn't ever want to talk to me or hang out with me, so I've given up on it. Maybe one day she might want to, but I don't want to waste my effort on making someone like me if they don't want to." It must upset your mum, I say. "I think it does. But you can only do so much. My mum has realised there is nothing she can do." How is your mum? "She's doing real well, thank you."

Kelly's album which, astonishingly, she largely wrote herself, is surprisingly decent. It has tremendous sprit. It legitimately rocks. It is her. I tell her I was touched by "More Than Life Itself", the one slow ballad. Kelly wrote it for Sharon, who is still undergoing chemotherapy. "You're the shoulder that I've always known/ And the hand that says I'm not alone/ More than myself/ I love you more than life itself." What did Sharon think of it? "She loved it. She cried." Your dad? "He loved it." Do they love everything you do? "My mum does. If I farted on a CD and handed it to her as my latest release, she'd love it. Dad would always tell the truth, though."

Ah, Ozzy. Lovely, befuddled Ozzy who seems mostly to be on his way out, but then smiles and looks like a silly baby in a wig. When did you first realise he had drug problems? "I always knew. He never kept it from us. Sometimes it upset me, but I realise that he has an addiction and can't help it and it doesn't mean he doesn't love us. The reason he's continued to live every day and struggle though his addiction is because of his love for us." Have you tried all the drugs? "Yeah. I just don't like them." Drink? "I'm no good with drink. I become the loud, obnoxious bore everyone hates."

Certainly, she has always been hopelessly spoiled materially. When I ask her about her earliest memory, she says it was when the family lived in Buckinghamshire (which they did until Kelly was 11) and "Do you remember those Hot Wheel cars?" The little things that came with the loop-the-loop orange track? "No. The red jeeps you could get in and drive. I always kept mine in the garage, next to the real cars." Oh.

With Ozzy touring and Sharon managing, I imagine she had lots of nannies. Any horrors? "The worst nannies. There was one nanny... I didn't want to eat vegetables, so she got me in a headlock and shoved them in my mouth." Ouch. "My mum caught her and got rid of her. Another nanny was sitting in the kitchen eating chocolate, and I asked if I could have some, and she said only if I licked the floor, so I did." Double ouch. "My mum caught her, too. She grabbed her by the head and threw her out." Hurrah for Sharon! "But the worst thing" (it gets worse?) "...a nanny ever did to us was lock us in the closet while she had a party in the house. She left us. Our housekeeper found us in the closet in the morning. My mother called the police on her."

Kelly, weren't you angry with your mum for leaving you with these psychopaths? I mean, they even make Jack seem adorable. "At first they were all so sweet and then they just turned. My mother was so protective of us. If anyone even looked at us wrongly... One time, I went to my friend's birthday party and we were on a carousel" (no pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, then, for Kelly O and co), "and this kid on the next horse goes: 'Are you Ozzy Osbourne's daughter?' I said 'yes' and he punched me in the face and gave me this huge black eye." Triple ouch. "So mum went to this kid's house and beat the shit out of the father."

Neat.

Unquestionably, she adores being an Osbourne. "I peed the bed until I was 12. I don't know what it was. It was, like, really weird. I read all these books on bed-wetting and they say it's because you're scared of something. When I was a kid I always used to think that I would be taken away. All I ever wanted to do was stay at home with my parents. I used to think school would take me away." School. Alas, Kelly and school never quite gelled. She went to a girls' school here, which she despised. "The other girls were all 'my horse, my horse'. I didn't have a horse. I had a quad bike. I was never a horsey girl. I couldn't think of anything worse than having to clean up shit every morning before school." She and Aimee were ultimately suspended. One of them swore on the coach during a school trip, and neither would say who it was. "The headmistress knew it was Aimee, so suspended her for saying it and me for not saying it was my sister. My mother called her and said: 'You're suspending my daughters because one swore and the other wouldn't tell on her own sister? What sort of morals do you have?' We never went back. My mum made the head cry." Neat. Again.

How did you like school when you shifted to Beverly Hills? "Hated it. I didn't give a stuff what people's parents did. I didn't care what sort of bag they had. I didn't care what clothes I had. I didn't know what designer clothing was until I went to America. I thought designer clothing was like Adidas and River Island and Kickers, because that's what girls were mad about here. DKNY? Didn't know what it was." Kelly dropped out in 10th grade, but is currently studying medieval history and Anglo-Saxon poetry at night school. Hey, only teasing. Got you again, though, didn't I?

Anyway, time to go now. There's more promotion to do. And lunch. The chips, it turns out, were just elevenses. She could have a hotel lunch but, then again, could just go down the corner shop for some Jammie Dodgers. "My favourite food here is Jammie Dodgers. I was so mad yesterday. I went and got some Jammie Dodgers and put them in my room and someone ate them! I was in the worst mood."

I can't see her ever sitting down to that peeled radish. Thank God.

'Shut Up' will be released next Monday on Epic Records