Model and subject of Billy Joel’s ‘Uptown Girl’, Christie Brinkley, has been handed a really quite special tax bill by the US government. How special? Over half a million dollars special. She must’ve missed the 90,000 letters they sent to her house reminding her, eh?

The exact figure, if you’re the kind of person who just loves an exact figure, is an impressive $531,720.

Looks like she’s going to have to do some work to pay that off. Basically, that means we can expect to see her in some awful reality TV show.

Of course, this is spare change to Christie. In 2008, she was estimated to be worth around $80 million. Weirdly enough, she has been working.

She starred as Roxie Hart in the West End production of Chicago this summer and is planning to launch her own skincare range with the help of former L’Oreal chief executive Jim Morrison.

No. Not that Jim Morrison.

So basically, you can stop fretting about the financial state of Brinkley because she’s probably got half-a-mil down the backs of her hundreds of settees in her numerous homes around the world.

And all because she appeared on the cover of the 1979 Sports Illustrated swimwear issue and had a dumb song written about her, latterly covered by Westlife.

Gah. It’s so hard being a gigantically wealthy celebrity, right?

Next week: Anthony Costa seen asking for ’10p to phone a mate’ outside Wandsworth Sainsbury’s.

This weekend, Billy Joel’s daughter Alexa Ray was rushed to hospital after taking eight pills in an apparent suicide attempt.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that she’s going to be fine – Alexa Ray Joel was released from hospital last night and is now being taken of by her family. The weird news, though, comes in the claim that Alexa Ray Joel had actually taken Traumeel, a homoeopathic anti-inflammatory medication that’s used as much on cats and dogs as it is on humans.

But at least it’s been confirmed that Alexa Ray is going to be fine. What’s more, it’s expected that she’ll have a nice glossy coat and waggy tail after all this as well. Too far? too far.

Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel must be relieved that 2009 is coming to an end. It hasn’t been particularly pleasant for either of them – Billy Joel split up with his young wife in June, and everything Christie Brinkley has done has been tainted by the fact that her ex-husband was a teen-screwing, porn-addicted tossbag – and now it’s ended in the worst possible way.

Alexa Ray Joel – the only daughter that Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley had during their nine-year marriage – was taken to hospital on Saturday after apparently overdosing on pills. She’s been released now, and potential causes for the overdose have ranged from the romantic splits of her parents, her own romantic split with a boy who improbably goes by the name of Jimmy Riot and just a general despondency over the fact that she’s constantly in the shadow of her mother and father.

However, contrary to earlier reports suggesting that she’d overdosed on sleeping pills, a source has told EW that the truth is slightly less troubling. According to the source, Alexa Ray Joel had actually overindulged on Traumeel, a homoeopathic treatment that can be used by human, dogs, cats and horses thanks to its comparatively low doses of ingredients like echinacea:

A source close to Alexa Ray Joel is downplaying events that led to the singer’s hospitalization on Saturday. The singer took Traumeel, a homeopathic medication used often as an anti-inflammatory drug, says the source, and “became worried about her breathing, which is why 911 was called.”

Unfortunately for Alexa Ray Joel, suicidal tendencies tend to run in the family – when Billy Joel was 21, he also tried to kill himself. But luckily for Alexa Ray Joel, another thing that runs in the family is a tendency to try to end it all in massively ineffectual ways – Billy’s suicide attempt involved drinking furniture polish, which probably ranks close to low-powered pills for poorly cats in terms of effectiveness.

Still, the main thing is that she’s OK. Hopefully, if this was the suicide attempt that’s being reported, it’ll serve as a wake-up call to those around Alexa Ray Joel and make them more aware of her emotional problems. Let’s hope so, anyway, because everyone knows that Traumeel is a gateway drug to harder stuff, like organic Highland lip balm.

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter

Yep, 60-year-old Billy Joel has split up with his 27-year-old wife. And that’s probably it. No excitement here.

Don’t expect anything as exciting as the Christie Brinkley/ Peter Cook divorce from these two. That’s partly because the thought of Billy Joel masturbating to $3,000 of porn a month is so grotty that it makes us want to punch ourselves unconscious, and partly because it’s unlikely that Billy Joel would run off with a teenager because the current 33-year age-gap between him and his estranged wife is already disturbing enough as it is, thank you very much.

Cuh. Billy Joel is boring.

You might not have known this, but for the last five years Billy Joel has been married to a 27-year-old chef called Katie Lee. We’re saying that you might not have known that, by the way, for two reasons: 1) Nobody has really thought about Billy Joel for the last 15 years, even by accident, and 2) Unlike Uptown Girl, which he wrote for Christie Brinkley, Billy Joel has never written any songs for Katie Lee. That’s not to say he hasn’t tried, of course, but he’s always come unstuck looking for something that rhymes with “Compared to me, you’re as old as a foetus.”

But anyway, none of that matters now – it’s just been announced that Billy Joel and Katie Lee are splitting up. People reports:

“After nearly five years of marriage Billy Joel & Katie Lee Joel have decided to separate. This decision is a result of much thoughtful consideration. Billy & Katie remain caring friends with admiration and respect for each other,” says a statement issued by both of their reps.

Now that’s sad and all, but it’s not the end of the world. This split means that Katie Lee can forge ahead with trying to make a name for herself, and also for finding a life partner who isn’t old enough to be one of her dad’s creepy friends.

And as for Billy Joel – well, is it too much to expect for him to get back together with Christie Brinkley? After all, thanks to her humiliating divorce from Peter Cook recently, Christie’s self-esteem is probably at its absolute lowest – and that means Billy Joel has never had a better chance of getting back into her knickers.

Oh, it’d be wonderful. Billy Joel could write some new songs for Christie Brinkley – called things like I’ll Never Leave You For A Teenager I Just Met In A Toyshop and Boy, Your Last Husband Sure Did Enjoy Wanking A Lot – and in return Christie could paint some more nightmarish, childlike album covers for Billy that everyone laughs at but secretly understands because if they’d somehow lucked their way into marrying a supermodel they’d probably let her scrawl some hapless, objectively bad artwork for them, too.

We’ve forgotten what our point was now. Something about Billy Joel, we think.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

Life can get pretty tiring when you're mercilessly exposing your estranged husband's wildly expensive internet pornography habit in public – just ask Christie Brinkley.

But how does Christie Brinkley like to relax in the few moments where she's not systematically kicking the father of her child in the balls again and again until his reputation is shattered forever? Simple – by hanging out with Billy Joel.

Christie Brinkley spent her Independence Day at a barbecue with ex-husband Billy Joel. While those close to Brinkley are busy pointing out that there's nothing romantic going on, Billy Joel must surely know that Christie Brinkley's heightened vulnerability means that she'll leap into his arms again as soon as he plays her the new song he's written about her, the doo-wop influenced My Monthly Internet Pornography Bill Is Marginally Smaller Than His.

It's probably fair to say that Christie Brinkley is the worst judge of men in the history of the entire universe. It's true – she's never managed to hold down a successful relationship for any decent length of time without them buggering everything up by shagging a teenager or spending $3,000 a month on internet porn or, in the case of Olivier Chandon de Brailles, crashing a racing car into a canal and drowning. Pigs, the lot of them.

But the closest Christie Brinkley has ever come to a perfect man is Billy Joel, the furniture polish-drinking recovering alcoholic who's recently become more famous for crashing his car than for singing.

While he was married to Christie Brinkley, Billy Joel loved her something rotten – he wrote all kinds of songs for her, including Uptown Girl, Shameless and Blonde Over Blue, and he even used the artwork that Christie created for his River Of Dreams album, even though it looked like it was painted by a polio-stricken goose hammered on cough medicine.

And Christie Brinkley loved Billy Joel too because, although she divorced him, she didn't tell the world how much he spent every month on masturbatory aids as revenge for him having sex with a teenager he met in a toystore. We get the impression that's the closest Christie Brinkley will ever get to love, anyway.

So imagine our delight when we heard that Christie Brinkley had taken time out from her punishing divorce routine to spend a hilarious Independence Day afternoon taunting clumsy children with Billy Joel at his house. People reports:

Brinkley, arrived with daughter Alexa Joel, 20, and "seemed good," says a friend of the supermodel's… An onlooker says Brinkley, Alexa, Billy and about a dozen friends "were having a blast," eating barbecue ribs and corn and sipping white wine. At one point Alexa dropped her first plate of food – "they were all laughing about that," says the source. 

Now, we know what you're thinking – you're wondering if this could be the start of a renewed love affair between Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel. Well, don't – as vulnerable and needy as Christie Brinkley probably is at the moment, Billy Joel happens to be happily married to Katie Lee Joel, a 27-year-old TV presenter.

Still, it's nice to see that Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel can remain on friendly terms following their divorce, which means there's a good chance that Christie and Peter Cook will be able to stay friends once this divorce is over, too. And even if they don't, Peter will still have $3,000 of porn to thwack away to every single month. Who needs friends when you've got that?