Terry Prone: Sharon Osbourne manages to stay relevant at ripe old age of 72

According to some anonymous source described as a “friend’ of Ms Osbourne, “she covers her arms because they’re so painfully thin and it is actually making her quite unhappy…”

One of the downsides of extreme fame and its attendant wealth is that “friend” who is always willing to self-promote by sharing shameful details about the celebrity.

One of the upsides of obscurity is that nobody wants to hear from such “friends” about you: who gives a rat’s if you wear long sleeves?

It’s not just that Sharon Osbourne is into arm-concealment. It’s that this lamentable action can be attributed to her use of one of the new slimming drugs, and therefore amounts to moral retribution.

Moral condemnation of famous people using GLP-1 drugs takes many forms.

Some users are to be condemned because they might, by their use, be shortening the supply of the drug to “real” patients, including those with diabetes.

Some get it in the neck because they won’t own up to having had pharmaceutical assistance in their phenomenal weight loss.

Others are frowned upon because they weren’t obese to start with. They just wanted to lose maybe 10kg and dammit to hell, should have the discipline to do that themselves without going what Oprah once described as the easy route.

One way or the other, folks using these drugs for weight loss purposes are to be outed for it and condemned. Of course they are. And if something awful happens to them as a result, this is right and proper. Serves them right if — like Stephen Fry — they have to come off the thing because it nauseates them to the point of throwing up six or seven times a day.

In this context, the “something awful” that’s happened to Sharon Osbourne is unusual. The word is that, having lost three stone in old money, she feels it’s too much and wants to put some of it back on. So she’s barrelling into burgers and fries. And not holding back when it comes to roasts and club sandwiches, either.

But, no matter how fervently and freely she ingests carbs, fats, and sugars, they do not stick to her ribs in the form of fat padding.

Or to her arms, either, but we’ll come back to those appendages a little later.

Now, it’s fair to assume many Examiner readers would, at this point, wonder what her problem is. That’s like being assumed into yo-yo dieter heaven! 

What’s wrong with her, complaining that she can eat whatever the hell she wants and put no weight on, while the rest of us gain bulk even when we restrict our intake to cottage cheese, the inventor of which earned themselves a special place in hell?

The answer is the arms. The arms causing poor Sharon to have to wear long sleeves because they’ve become so skinny.

Now, being serious for just one moment, poor Sharon would be better off going to the gym to make sure she doesn’t lose muscle mass as a consequence of this medication, as opposed to mourning the plump arms she once owned.

Her “friend,” the one sharing the secrets of Sharon’s mourning process, does, however, miss one point in her eagerness to get to God’s punishment for her using slimming drugs.

Nobody tells you about the arms

That point — that truth that nobody warns you about in your younger years — is that your arms at 72 tend not to be the assets they once were. A bit like your chest. Let’s not do an in-depth discussion of the deterioration of cleavage due to age. Shit happens. Particularly to the exposed portions of older women. This is where Sharon and I have something in common.

And it happens even if you have been “good”.

Throughout my youth, I never allowed my hands out in the sun on their own. SP50 and white cotton gloves were deployed, because I was so determined not to get wrinkly skin and age spots later on.

That pretty much worked, although other people on the beach did tend to look at the white gloves with expressions that indicated they assumed I had some strange disease and it might be a good idea to move a bit away from me.

The decades passed, and the payoff for the cotton gloves and the SPF 50 seemed good until — quite suddenly — my hands grew veins. Or maybe they’re arteries. Who knows?

Ropy blue things that go away temporarily if I hold my hands over my head for 60 seconds, which you can’t do in most business and social settings.

Women in their 70s tend to divide into two schools of thought on this matter. (Men don’t seem to care.)

One school says that this is a natural consequence of ageing and that to conceal or tinker with it in any way is ageist.

The other school says nobody likes it and it makes sense to wear higher necklines, long sleeves, and — at least in winter — gloves.

I contacted a friend I know to be taking these meds but who sensibly shuts up about it, because who needs to become the focus of other people’s moral condemnation? I sent the friend the new photograph taken to illustrate how Osbourne looks.

My friend opined that “if this is her two days ago, then she’s looking far less gaunt than the last time I saw a photo of her”.

Ah, I thought. I’m not losing my marbles. I thought she looked fine.

“The ‘can’t put on weight’ argument, though, does not make sense,” my friend added. “The medicine augments GLP-1. It merely curbs appetite. I (and anyone else I know on it) can feel its effect wear off as the week draws out. So, if you want to reverse, come off it. 

"Within a week, presumably, you’d start reversing. This notion of it changing something in metabolism doesn’t make sense to me. If it did, then, surely, people on it for diabetes would find themselves cured at some point and no longer in need of their prescription.”

This personal opinion is firmly backed by the research into what happens when someone has lost substantial amounts of weight on one of these drugs and then quits. 

Former users tend to regain the bulk of their lost weight in the months after they stop. Ms Osbourne is rare, if not unique, in suffering what might be called the Sharon Syndrome.

She may not like her arms, the way they are, right now. She may yearn for the return of 10 pounds. But what a way to stay current.

Difficult to think of another TV performer who, at 72, manages to reinvent herself and keep herself front and centre the way she does.