Leads, twists in 'piano man' case
LONDON, England (AP) -- Hospital authorities caring for a patient who refuses to talk but willingly plays the piano for hours said Tuesday they are investigating a number of new leads on his identity.
The tall, blond-haired man, who is in his 20s or early 30s, has not said a word since he was found, distressed and dressed in a dripping wet suit, on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent county, southeast England, on April 7.
When staff at the Medway Maritime Hospital in Gillingham gave him writing materials, he drew detailed pictures of a grand piano and, when shown the piano in the hospital chapel, sat down and played for two hours, causing staff to nickname him "Piano Man."
Baffled staff said their problems have been compounded by the fact that all the labels have been cut off the man's clothes.
"That is a real twist -- and it's enough of a mystery without that," said Adrian Lowther, spokesman for the West Kent National Health Service Trust, which is caring for the man at a psychiatric unit in Dartford in north Kent.
"Apart from mentally, the man is healthy, and he is washing himself. But he does not communicate at all, so he cannot receive counseling," Lowther said.
He said a tabloid newspaper has provided the man with a piano; playing noticeably calms him down.
Lowther said the National Missing Persons Helpline has received 320 calls and 70 e-mails after releasing a picture of the man and one of his piano drawings on Monday. The health trust has also received a number of telephone calls.
"We are wading through those with the police -- we just hope that in among the calls may be someone who knows him," said Lowther. "But it will take some time."
The British press has likened his case to the Oscar-winning 1996 movie "Shine," about acclaimed pianist David Helfgott, who suffered a nervous breakdown while playing. But the man does not seem to be more than an accomplished amateur.
Michael Camp, the man's social worker, has said that when he is not playing the piano, he remains very anxious.
"Someone, somewhere must be missing him," said Camp. "At the moment we only have six weeks' of history of this man to work on, which makes it very hard."
Hospital chaplain the Rev. Steve Spencer said the man "is not the virtuoso that he has been portrayed in the press. He knows a small number of tunes and plays them over and over -- I recognized some John Lennon and a snippet from Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake.'
"When he plays, he is totally focused -- he cuts out everything else and it makes him calmer."
Hospital staff have already ruled out reports that he recently attended a funeral locally. 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 was able to get through to him.
Wikinews reported on May 17 that several weeks earlier British police had picked up an unidentified man wandering the streets of Sheerness, United Kingdom. The man who has thus far refused to talk, has demonstrated himself to be an excellent pianist—earning him the nickname ''Piano Man''.

Since publication of our first article, we have been contacted by a fellow wiki contributor informing us that the ''Piano Man'' may be a British actor named Geoffrey Betts. Although our contact strongly believed he knew the identity of the man and contacted the relevant authorities in regard to his belief, this has turned out to be false. While Betts was not reachable by phone or e-mail, his  website was recently updated to the effect that he is ''not'' the man in question. In the meantime, the search for the identity has been narrowed down to three leads by authorities.

The original interview between Wikinews editor CGorman and contributor Steve Magruder is reproduced below.