SEEN LATELY DANIEL RYAN Actor

I have just finished reading the script for Mike Packer's play Card Boys which opens at the Bush this week. Mike used to be an actor but gave it up two years ago to be a writer and has been working on this play since then. It is a love story about people who put prostitutes' cards in telephone boxes.

There are three characters: a card boy, the man he looks after, and a prostitute who is pregnant. It is not necessarily the card boy's baby but they are having a relationship. He wants her to move to the country and set up a marijuana farm, so it's a case of out of the frying pan. It's a play about people in a different world but it shows you can still make choices and you can still get out. It's funny, touching and honest. I think it's a terrific play and hope he'll be one of the new writers for the future.

I bought the video of Robert Winston's The Human Body, a six-part series tracing a person from conception to death. Winston has a great knack of explaining the science and technology in human terms,and the final part is very moving where you watch someone die. It is an extraordinary programme which makes you question how lucky you are to be here.

Daniel Ryan is appearing as Bottom in the Royal Shakespeare Company's `A Midsummer Night's Dream', Stratford (01789 295623.