Sharon Osbourne has double mastectomy after finding out she carries 'breast cancer gene'

Sharon Osbourne has had a double mastectomy after finding out she carries a gene which increases the risk of getting breast cancer, the British television personality said in an interview published on Monday.

Osbourne, 60, a former judge on America's Got Talent who is married to rock legend Ozzy Osbourne, battled colon cancer ten years ago and told Hello magazine she could not endure the ordeal again.

"As soon as I found out I had the breast cancer gene, I thought: 'The odds are not in my favour,'" Osbourne told the magazine.

"I've had cancer before and I didn't want to live under that cloud: I decided to just take everything off, and had a double mastectomy."

Osbourne -- who recently became a grandmother when her son Jack had a daughter, Pearl -- underwent 13 hours of surgery to remove both breasts.

"For me, it wasn't a big decision, it was a no-brainer," she said.

"I didn't want to live the rest of my life with that shadow hanging over me. I want to be around for a long time and be a grandmother to Pearl."

The op comes just five months after Jack Osbourne, 26, revealed that he had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Sharon Osbourne was Ozzy Osbourne's manager in the late 1970s after he left the heavy metal band Black Sabbath, and they later married.

She gained television fame on the 2002-2005 hit MTV reality series "The Osbournes", which followed the lives of her, Ozzy, Jack and her daughter Kelly.

She went on to host British talent show The X Factor between 2004 and 2007, then America's Got Talent between 2007 and 2012. She currently co-hosts The Talk, a chat show in the United States.