UK News 19-05-2005 Who Is The Piano Man? who: National Missing Persons Helpline what: Receives hundreds of calls from people trying to identify mysterious Piano Man when: This week snippet: "The identity of a man found wandering on a beach in an evening suit and who will not talk but who expertly plays piano concertos for hours is baffling police," says The Telegraph. "A theory that the so-called Piano Man is a French street musician has neither been proven nor discounted," says a report on The Mail`s website, "and is merely one of 300 identities that are being investigated, his social worker has claimed." "He sits, incommunicado, in a locked, hospital ward close to the M25, possibly in expectation of someone claiming him as their own or offering a clue as to his identity," writes Cahal Milmo in The Independent. "But those caring for the 6ft-tall virtuoso, who is in his twenties or thirties and was found on a beachside road on the Isle of Sheppey on 7 April, admitted yesterday there was a chance they would never know his real name, or where he came from." "It was only when someone in hospital had the bright idea of leaving him with a piece of paper and pencils that the first intriguing clue about the stranger`s past emerged," explains The Guardian`s Steven Morris. "He drew a detailed sketch of a grand piano. Excited, hospital staff showed him into a room with a piano and he began to skilfully perform meandering, melancholy airs. Several weeks later he has still not spoken a word, expressing himself only through his music." "On Tuesday, a Polish street mime artist approached police in Rome saying he had worked with the man in Nice," says the BBC. But Thursday`s Mirror says he may be the same stranger "who turned up with no memory in Canada and became a celebrity". "There are amazing similarities between the prodigy found wandering near a beach last month and the man dubbed Mr Nobody across the Atlantic," says the report by Paul Byrne And Jan Disley. "Both are the same age with the same striking looks, have dyed blond hair, all labels torn from their clothes and are unusually gifted. And both lost their memory." "The man, who now calls himself Sywald Skeid, walked into a hospital in Toronto in November 1999 with a broken nose and bloody face after apparently being attacked," says The Evening Standard. Mr Skeid failed to acquire a British or canadian passport, served a spell in prison for immigration offences, and has not been heard of since last year. [... more]

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