As a strategy, this has had mixed results: Joel has been married and divorced three times, his last wife (in conversation he uses “ex 1” and “ex 2” rather than names) was 33 years younger than him, and his current girlfriend is 32 years his junior. There was speculation that it was the emotional fall-out from his divorces that led to a spate of car crashes between 2002 and 2010, which he claimed were due to wet driving conditions but which some attributed to drinking. Joel is a private man who resents such intrusions into his personal life - he recently returned the advance he had been given to write an autobiography when he realised his publishers were hoping for a sensationalist insight into his life.