Missing Baker Street Singer Gerry Rafferty Is Living In Hiding

Despite a report in the NME earlier today stating that he's been missing for almost 7 months, the UK's Guardian is reporting that Gerry Rafferty, the singer who wrote the 1978 hit Baker Street, is living in hiding in the south of England, being cared for by a friend, after his disappearance from St Thomas' hospital in London last summer.

The Guardian understands that the musician, who has battled alcoholism for years, was taken under the wing of the friend after he rampaged through his London hotel room following a bender, then checked himself out of the hospital where he was being treated for liver problems, leaving behind his belongings.

The Paisley-born singer, who had formed the Humblebums with Billy Connolly before going on to front Stealers Wheel and writing Stuck in the Middle With You, hit the headlines in August when he trashed his room at the Westbury hotel, where he had been staying for four days.

The hotel director told a Scottish newspaper that after Rafferty checked out, the carpets, curtains and bed frame had to be ripped out and incinerated. Alex Huggan said: "He has damaged quite a lot of his room, because he has been incontinent for four days. There was blood and urine everywhere."

This month the Word magazine reported that the singer had been missing for six months. The website ultimate-guitar.com reported that Rafferty might have been kidnapped, but one of its readers posted: "Don't worry. He's fine. I served him in a restaurant just off Piccadilly Circus tonight, then helped him to his hotel. Thought he looked familiar, so I went back and asked the porter his name.

"Googled him, saw all the reports, and called the cops. Cops came and said he's fine and all this internet rumour is just internet rumour. Gerry Rafferty is fine."

A month later, another reader wrote: "He is still fine. He is at a hotel in Bournemouth, Dorset, for a few days ... "

Two sources have told the Guardian that 61-year-old Rafferty is "alive and sounding comparatively well". It is estimated that he makes a reasonable income each year from royalties received from his most famous track, Baker Street, which came from his solo album, City to City. Stuck in the Middle With You also made Rafferty and co-writer Joe Egan a fortune when it was used on the soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino's film Reservoir Dogs.

Tony Williams, a former member of Stealers Wheel and now a councillor in Blackpool, said: "I was extremely worried when I heard that he had walked out of hospital in the middle of the night and that he left clothes and belongings behind. As a councillor I am the chair of BSafe Blackpool and through police contacts tried to see if there were any reports of him - but there weren't."

By 1983, Rafferty had turned his back on music to "watch my family grow". In 2005, he collapsed at his home in Hampstead, London, issuing denials that he had overdosed on prescription drugs.