UK Hospital's Piano Man Mystery

Patient Refuses To Talk, But Plays Up A Storm

(AP) 
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. It also is similar to the movie "Ladies in Lavender," which was recently released in the United States and is about a violinist who washes up ashore in Cornwall after a shipwreck, speaks only Polish and is nursed back to health by elderly sisters portrayed by Dames Maggie Smith and Judi Dench. He goes on to a triumphant concert.

But the piano man does not seem to be more than an accomplished amateur.

Michael Camp, the man's social worker, said that when he is not playing the piano, he remains very anxious.

"Someone, somewhere must be missing him," Camp said. "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 the man was from Eastern Europe and possibly seeking asylum, but no one was able to get through to him.