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Brits rush to help 'piano man'
17/05/2005 12:18 - (SA)
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| The unidentified man known as "piano man" is picture in the grounds of Medway Maritime Hospital, Gillingham. (Mike Gunnill, AP) |
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London - British police and social workers on Tuesday sifted through public responses to an appeal to identify a mystery piano player who was found wandering, soaked and confused, on an English beach last month.
British media said orchestras across Europe have been contacted as part of a broad effort to identify the young blond-haired man who is now being held in a secure mental health unit in the south-eastern Kent region.
The Medway Maritime Hospital, where he first received care, said the man had not spoken since being found soaking wet on the beach of the coastal town of Sheerness dressed in a chic black suit and tie.
Making it harder to identify him is the fact that all the labels had been cut from the suit, white shirt and tie, social workers said.
The Medway hospital made an appeal for help from the public on Sunday through the national service for missing persons, and released a photo showing a tall, thin man in his 20s or early 30s, with closely-cropped hair and hunched shoulders.
The helpline had received more than 160 calls by late Monday.
Police and social workers said they would examine a number of new leads on Tuesday.
A spokesperson from West Kent National Health Service Trust said that sorting through all the information received after the appeal would take several days.
After failing to elicit any details from the patient, who appears anxious around strangers, hospital employees gave him a pen and paper hoping he would write his name, but instead he drew a detailed sketch of a grand piano.
"When we took him to the chapel piano it really was amazing... he played for several hours, non-stop," said Michael Camp, one of the social workers at the Medway hospital.
"I am not knowledgeable about classical music but I could tell he was pretty good," said Camp, who is based at the accident and emergency unit at Medway.
A spokesperson for the West Kent National Health Service Trust would not confirm reports that he has played sections of Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky, because "nobody was skilled enough" to recognise the music.
But she said he had staged a "beautiful" performance.
"He's not talking at all," she said. "He's very frightened. He's drawing, but not to communicate. We are aware that he is a very vulnerable man and we would be putting him in a dangerous situation if we let him go."
Interpreters from Poland, Latvia and Lithuania were brought in to see if he was from eastern Europe, and possibly an asylum seeker, but no one has been able to get him to talk.
The case has drawn comparisons with the Oscar-winning 1996 movie Shine, which tells the story of acclaimed pianist David Helfgott who suffered a nervous breakdown while playing.
- AFP
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