Press Releases

The family guy
March 10, 2006
The Scotsman
by Lee Randall

"WOULD YOU MIND taking your shirt off for the last few shots?" asks the photographer. This is not a salacious request. Jimmy Osmond is well layered and will be entirely decorous even without the swatch of vivid blue. He grins, says, "Sure". Jimmy Osmond is a "Sure" kind of guy. He's made it clear that whatever we need, he'll provide.

The post-interview shoot has been chatty, but while our stream continues unabated, I find myself averting my eyes, directing comments over my left shoulder while he adjusts his clothing. Everyone else busies their eyes elsewhere, too. "You don't have to look the other way, you know," he teases.

But I do. Despite his jovial, easy-going charm, Jimmy Osmond inspires respect. He embodies the maxim: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. He is courteous, engaging, helpful, friendly, and so you are all that in return. Despite employing the words "play", "fun" and "silly" with great regularity, he exudes dignity.

This would have been shocking news as recently as November, if you were among those who greeted his arrival in Australia for I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here with disbelief. Jimmy Osmond? Whose idea of a joke was that? Though I watched his family on American television throughout the late 1970s, all I knew about him was that in a family of famous smilers, he smiled harder than the rest. I still pictured that wee boy trussed up in a satin tuxedo and top hat. "Probably singing Mammy," he says now, rolling his eyes.

Osmond was a revelation. His initial genius move - brilliantly yet benignly undercutting that goody-goody persona - was to be the first celebrity reprimanded, when he revealed that his teddy bear contained contraband salt and pepper (we would discover Hummy held more surprises, including a taped message from Jimmy's family). Proving himself a true youngest child, he questioned authority so relentlessly over his 17-day stint that Ant and Dec nominated him the Number One Rule Bender of any series.

What really struck those of us not already fans, was what a first-rate man he is, a fact that equally impressed his fellow castaways. Sid Owen said, "He's the nicest, kindest person that I have met in quite a long time." Jilly Goolden gushed, "Jimmy rocks. Maybe people don't like nice, kind, inspiring, lovely men, but he should win." And Antony Costa said, "He brings a sense of calmness to the camp and is genuinely really, really nice."

Osmond admits that the job came just as he was hankering to show his family Australia. He had a place in Sydney some years back and loves it there. When the producers offered to bring over his whole family - wife Michelle and kids Sophia (11), Zachary (8), Wyatt (5) and Bella (3) - he jumped at the chance. "I thought, I'm a foreigner and I know I'll get voted off first, so I'll have a couple of weeks with my family on Australia's Gold Coast. But it didn't work out like that."

While the family juggled tourism and home schooling, Osmond hauled water, ate possum stew ("the worst"), cleaned out the dunny and dressed up like a "giant licorice" to hop between lily pads in an effort to win food for the camp. Once reunited, they struck out "to play" in Singapore. "I try really hard to show my kids the world as much as I can. I think it's really healthy. It's the way I was raised. It's better to see places than always be reading about them."

For Osmond, who has spent a lifetime being cruelly mocked in the press about his size, the jungle was a proving ground. "I'm self-conscious," he admits. "My whole life I've been in the public eye and worried about what people thought of me. Even though I've achieved a lot, I've always had this thing about 'is my hair OK?'- you know, too primpy.

"I forced myself to be myself and not play to the cameras. I was there for the experience of it. I didn't have anything to sell or prove. And what I brought out was that people liked me for who I was. I didn't have to put on any airs. I felt good that I was able to face some of those fears."

As well as transforming public opinion. Last Christmas he was working in Portsmouth. "Guys would come out of the pubs and say 'Hi Jimmy, how are you?', whereas before they'd just make fun of me."

In terms of physical tests, the best was when he and Jenny Frost were sent for the chest. "It was a total leap of faith to hop in the basket, pull this handle and just be flung to the very top of the rainforest. I was up there a long time. It probably didn't look that exciting but at the time it was HELLO!" Actually, Jimmy, you shouted "Nelly Belly!"

Suspecting the public voted to keep him away from the worst trials, he does wish he could have gone up against the snakes and bugs, but is delighted he escaped at least one: "The heights thing would have been scary. I couldn't have jumped out of a plane." He says surprising things were tough. "One thing that doesn't look hard but is, is moving the wood up and down. I invented these things they call Jimmy Jugglers to carry wood. It was fun for me to invent stuff that people could use. I was always busy, cartooning, a bunch of things. I invented games, anything I could do to keep everybody busy."

He quickly emerged as a natural leader, devising activities whenever tempers flared and spirits dipped. "I didn't feel that, but thank you. I've learned how to be happy anywhere. If I went to prison I would find something to do of value to me."

Try as I might, I cannot envisage circumstances that would put Jimmy Osmond behind bars. But he is accurate about his ability to make the most of any circumstances. Forty-three next month, he's spent 40 of those years working. At five he had the family's first number-one hit. At 15 he took charge of the family's merchandising and advertising. He lived alone in Japan throughout his teens, a fact I greet with some astonishment, but which he downplays. "I wasn't in Japan full-time: when we were off I'd go over there or I'd do endorsements for soft-drink companies, which kept me in the eye of the Japanese people. It was a unique experience that gave me an incredible sense of autonomy."

His business acumen is prodigious and his CV richly varied, though he insists that he has a short attention span and these projects don't run concurrently. He relies as much upon good advice as his instincts, he says, and admits there have been some failures. Among the successes have been film and television production companies, real estate, an animation workshop and the Osmond General Store. As a result, he stayed afloat when the family's fortunes nose-dived after a disastrous investment lost in the region of 80 million (£46 million).

In the 1990s, spotting Branson, Missouri emerging as the new Nashville, he bought a theatre and installed the brothers, doing two shows daily, six days a week, thus giving the struggling family some financial security. But he's one of the subtlest millionaires around. The only hint of wealth is a gold watch ringed with diamonds, but even that lies hidden beneath his shirt and blazer, for this is not a man who shoots his cuffs to get attention. If anything, he mocks himself constantly - a great way of ring-fencing yourself without alienating others. Here's how it goes:

LR: "Why all this self deprecation? You're fabulous."

JO: "I don't want to come off as being a big ego."

LR: "We watched you around the clock for three weeks."

JO: "Sorry, it's been quite a sight!"

LR: "And no one seeing that could think of you as having an overly large ego."

JO: "That's nice, because I hate that. I've been around a lot of people who think they're the bee's knees and it freaks me out. The moment you think you're better than anybody is the moment you should lock yourself up."

LR: "How do you retain humility with all the applause night after night?"

JO: "Realise what it's all about. It's not about you. The reason people come to our concerts is not about us - it isn't! It's about reliving their past, so really this experience is about them, and if you focus on that, then you've got it."

LR: "You're so even-tempered - I want you around during my next crisis."

JO: "Oh, you're niiiice."

LR: "You exude calmness."

JO: "Like a big aspirin."

LR: "More like a Valium."

JO: (giggles) "I don't know, I don't think I've got that."

LR: "I refer to you as the Buddha."

JO: "Buddha belly?"

He's an old soul, and a canny one, with several lifetimes' experience under his belt already, each offering its own indelible lesson. "I've been around a lot of brothers with a lot of confusion and contention, everybody does in a big family dynamic, and I learned to swallow my own pride a little bit. You can get a lot farther if you do. You can look into someone's eyes and in a minute know how to make someone feel better about themselves, or worse. [In the jungle] it was fun to learn about other people. You can really learn a lot and defuse situations by listening and being patient, kind and understanding. Everyone wants someone to talk to; they don't want advice, they just want to vent. It was fun being the ventee instead of the venter."

How much of his serenity is faith-based? "Religion is important. If you don't know where you came from and where you're headed, what is the whole experience about? You make decisions differently. If I know that this is contrary to what my belief system is, what my path in life is going to be, I just don't do it. It's not an option. It's simpler, and more freeing, to have a sense of purpose. I always say this but it's true, if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything. Regardless of what your religious background is, you should be the best and stand for that, and the whole world will be better because there'd be a sense of true direction."

THE dentistry is dazzling, the eyes twinkly, and the cheekbones movie-star-worthy, but to make Jimmy Osmond light up from within, ask about his family. "I've been blessed with some of the greatest kids on the planet and a great wife who is supporting and loving and trusting.

"I spoil them rotten. They're the best kids. I am so loving to my babies and so is my wife, and we show so much affection, but we also demand respect. I do constantly correct them but I also constantly love them. That's the way I was brought up and it was wonderful. My dad was quite strict - I'm not as strict, but he was an army sergeant. But my mother was so loving and nurturing. It's fun to try to take the best of both and hopefully be a good parent. Who knows how they'll turn out, but so far ... " he knocks a huge circle with his knuckles on the wooden tabletop.

If he was the most creative celebrity in the jungle, that's just a taste of his parenting technique. "I'm always inventing stories with my kids, going places in your mind. Every night I tell them a story with a series of characters that they helped to create, so they have ownership in these characters, themes and ideas. They have weird names and are larger than life to them. I've seen the kids in situations where they ask, 'Well what would Patinka do?' It's good, because they learn something out of their subconscious. And in our church we have family home evenings once a week. We talk about things we need to work on. We celebrate the kids' accomplishments, or say, hey, we need to work harder on cleaning up or making your bed. I think it's so important to do that once a week so they know that they're more important to daddy and mommy than their work."

Despite being one of the few child stars to emerge with sanity intact, Osmond has given his kids a taste of the limelight. "I'll be supportive if they want to go into the business. My daughter was in the show quite a bit and so was my oldest son - he looks just like me, poor kid, but he's great. They're talented and I think that stage experience was good for their confidence."

They'll survive, as he did, because the family is a great grounding influence. "My family was always knocking me on the head saying this isn't a real experience, this is fun, so stop even thinking that you're an entertainer. But a lot of child stars go through being pampered, adored, everything showered upon them and then it goes away and they think something's wrong with them. Their self-esteem goes away and they'll try anything to escape, and I've had many friends go through that. I had low times but I always had something going. I was passionate about trying new things and that ended up blessing me because when I did have a so-called showbiz career valley, I was doing something else."

As you do, I quizzed Osmond about his favourite movies and songs, and he confessed that he fights to stay on top of the current music scene. "Like the Black Eyed Peas and all that. I change the lyrics, I don't want my kids to hear that, but I love that rhythm - they have the most killer grooves I've ever heard." And persistent, too. Thus my enduring image sees him carrying his shirt, sauntering down a hotel corridor warbling, "No, no, no, don't mess with my heart." It's incongruous, I know, but everything about Jimmy Osmond defies expectations.

• The Osmonds play Edinburgh Playhouse tomorrow, tel: 0870 606 3424 for more details.