Posted on 08/22/2005 6:06:57 AM PDT by wjersey
LONDON, England (CNN) -- The mysterious "Piano Man" at a British hospital who did not speak to doctors and nurses for four months has been discharged and is back in his home country of Germany.
A spokesman for the West Kent National Health Service and Social Care Trust in southeast England said his condition had shown a "marked improvement" and he no longer needed medical treatment.
The German foreign ministry confirmed that he is a German who flew home Saturday.
"Piano Man" is a 20-year-old from Bavaria, government officials told The Associated Press.
British health officials refused to comment on a report in the Daily Mirror tabloid Monday that the man -- who remained silent after being found distressed and soaking wet on a beach in southern England on April 7 -- had finally spoke to staff last week.
The paper added to the mystery by saying "Piano Man" was something of a misnomer.
The Mirror said that his he had misled doctors about an "imaginary illness" and said that far from being a concert trained pianist, he could hardly play a note.
The newspaper said he had previously worked with mentally ill patients and had copied some of their characteristics.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
Psychiatry is like Modern Art. Even the experts have trouble differentiating fakes from the real thing.
Music to my ears.
pretty cool hoax. When's the movie come out? People Magazine? C'mon, no time to waste, we have a new celebrity here. Endorsements? Reality TV? There's got to be something...
New on FOX, The Asylum. 10 people are placed in an insane asylum. 9 are ordinary people but one is a real insane Axe murderer.
So a man walks into a bar and pulls out a tiny little piano and a one foot tall man and puts them on the bar...
PING
Too many of the "experts" belong on the other side.
And the bartender says, "what thaaaa.....", and the one foot man says.....................
As in Freud, oh, I mean, fraud?
If someone fakes a mental illness, one could argue that the person does indeed have a mental illness - just not the one they are pretending to have.
I thought hoax when I first heard this story but either way maybe Tom Cruise could help him....
Now, wait just a second. Some of us have these things called "memories," you know...
From a previous story:
When given a pencil and paper by hospital staff, the mystery man drew a grand piano - and then, when shown a piano at the hospital chapel, he impressed his carers with a remarkable virtuoso performance.
The show just ended. What you've just witnessed was concocted by the media.
Read the articles carefully, and you'll find that claims of piano ability are never quotes. The hospital staff said that he wasn't an impressive piano player. The chaplain, for instance, said he was "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'".
Given statements like that by the hospital staff, any portrayal otherwise was an effort by a reporter to sensationalize a story. Without the piano virtuoso angle, I think you'll have to admit that it wouldn't have seemed like a 'pretty cool hoax'.
See #15.
Dear SunTzuWu,
Hey! Thanks for the heads-up!
Classical Music Ping List ping!
Looks like our mystery is solved!
sitetest
Oh, my. Just a big ... well, I don't know what to call it. Who spread the information that he was adept at the piano?
Just another reason to distrust the media.
Oho. How very interesting...
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