The Piano Man remained in hospital for four months, and despite huge press coverage and obsessive callers on the helpline, no one was any closer to finding out who the man was.
Several ‘suspicious’ things were reported, although never verified. Supposedly the hospital reported several months in that the man’s hair was dyed. It was peculated that they should have known this earlier; that the late announcement was a cover up; and that the dying of hair in the first place was a sign of guilt from the man.
Then, on 19th August 2005, a nurse walked in to the man’s room. She asked, ‘Are you going to talk to me today?’, to which he replied, ‘Yes. I think I will.’
No one knows quite what happened after that – only that the man was identified as 20-year-old Andreas Grassl from Bavaria, and the next day he was flown back to Germany. The German Embassy in London confirmed his identity, but otherwise no one said any more about it.
The press hounded his family home in Germany, but to no avail. It took very little time for the papers to declare the entire story a scam from beginning to end. The Daily Mirror and Star in particular were vehemently angry with Andreas.
Various stories changed – including that the so-called Piano Man could never play at all.
Researchers said that Andreas had at one time worked in a psychiatric hospital himself, and was therefore able to mimic the behaviour of the mentally ill.
The Piano Man 