A GERMAN who became known internationally as the Piano Man after turning up on a Kent beach suffering apparent memory loss and then playing music in hospital, had written repeatedly of his yearning for fame.

Andreas Grassl, 20, had bombarded German television stations for years with requests to appear on their shows. He also wrote to Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman, and Robbie Williams, the singer, asking them to help him launch a career in the media.

Grassl eventually secured a column in a local newspaper in which he dwelt scornfully on the instant fame achieved by pop stars and reality TV contestants and said he would “so love to be a millionaire”.

He achieved a different kind of fame during four months of psychiatric treatment at National Health Service hospitals in Gillingham and Dartford. He refused to speak, expressing himself only by drawing, and playing, a piano. The mystery prompted a hunt across Europe to identify him.

A selection of Grassl’s writing obtained by The Sunday Times — including articles and letters in his school magazine and his columns for the Bayerwald Echo in the Bavarian town of Cham — reveals that he had long been preoccupied with his search for celebrity.

A letter to a German broadcaster when he was 15 and struggling with his closet homosexuality in a staunchly Catholic village in southern Bavaria, met with rejection like so many others.

Yet Andreas Türck, a TV presenter, softened his reply with words of encouragement. “I hope you keep true to your dream,” he wrote. “Because what would our everyday lives be like without the secret wishes which everyone has — without dreams and fantasies in which we can escape?”

As the world’s media laid siege this weekend to the Grassl family farm in Prosdorf, near the Czech border, local people were bewildered by the attention given to a reputed loner.

Grassl was the only one of his contemporaries to go to the Robert Schuman grammar school, 19 miles away in Cham, where he developed a love of sonatas and French literature.

He was not popular with his classmates and appears to have compensated by becoming an attention seeker. Articles and letters published in the school magazine, Chamäleon, attest to his obsession with notoriety.

He reported every triumph, no matter how small. “On December 6 my voice was heard for approximately 20 seconds on the Czech radio station Cesky Rozhlas 7,” he boasted in one edition.

Grassl’s first break came at the end of 2000 when the Bayerwald Echo agreed to let him write a column entitled Cult and aimed at teenagers. The columns became more personal, betraying his appetite for stardom. In one he criticised the effortless fame acquired by others through programmes such as Big Brother. “It’s suddenly the fashion to shove people inside a container, pull them out one after the other and then turn them into pop stars for a week,” he wrote.

Grassl’s writings leave other questions unanswered, including what happened after he left Prosdorf in the summer of 2004 and before he was found in Sheerness wearing a dinner suit with the labels cut out.

He visited Saarbrücken, southwest Germany, and Paris but there is no sign of the success he had imagined.

Professor Carey Cooper, a psychologist at Lancaster University, said Grassl may have been suffering from “Hollywood syndrome”. “It’s a real problem among all the failed actors in Hollywood when they get to the point where they can no longer accept that they’ve failed,” he said. “They begin to act as if they are famous or find means unconsciously or consciously to attract attention.”

Grassl has yet to provide an explanation. He has told the family lawyer that he suffered a breakdown and knew nothing about his fame as Piano Man until he spoke to his carers earlier this month and left Little Brook hospital, Dartford.

Although claiming to need peace and quiet, Grassl could satisfy his desire for fortune as well as fame if he cashes in on the international interest in his story. British tabloids were bidding up to £50,000 to interview him last week and a book could earn him more.

“With clever PR and marketing it could be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds and potentially a nice film deal,” said Max Clifford, the publicist. “If he gets piano lessons and becomes amazing then it could be millions.”

Dr Howard Stoate, the Labour MP for Dartford, said Grassl should use any profits to pay back the money the NHS had spent on him. His medical bills have been estimated at between £20,000 and £40,000.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Swine flu vaccine for all as drug rushed through
• Artificial sperm and the race to build a baby
• BBC jets out stars to tout for prizes