Michael Ryan is the Liverpool man who won a football team in a raffle and tried to buy Wayne Rooney. It sounds like a fantasy and it is, one of the plot lines for the Sky One drama series Dream Team. Ryan, from the Scotland Road area of Liverpool, plays club chairman Dean Boyle in the football club series which starts its eighth season on Sunday 17th October.
Set around the exploits of the fictional Harchester United, Ryan is starting his second season with the show.
"I played a fan at the start and then I won the club in this raffle," he explains. "I was club chairman but now I'm chief executive."
It's a wonderful role for the Liverpool actor who never realised he wanted to be one until he read out loud in school lessons.
"I tried to bring the books alive but never realised what I was doing. I just enjoyed it."
Encouraged, he joined an acting course and found himself cast in the BBC 2 television drama-documentary Innocent Party - as a drug dealer. He followed that up with a part as a brain-damaged boy in Jimmy McGovern's television drama Dockers.
There had been some stage work - Dracula at the Everyman,, Hay Fever at the Neptune - and eventually his role in Dream Team, Sky One's most popular drama series. Although not called upon to play football in the show, he does play for the Dream Team's charity team. "Every Scouser can play football," he declares.
An Everton fan, he films the football scenes at Milwall's ground while the studio scenes are shot in the East End.
He was, however, surprised to learn that Everton chairman Bill Kenwright was appearing in the show. "That was when I tried to buy Wayne Rooney for £25m and Bill was seen on the television saying he was not for sale!"
He had a tip-off that Kenwright was due to appear and actually approached him about it two weeks before the screening. "He denied it", he laughs.
The only other Merseyside actor in the show is James Watts who plays footballer Lee Presley - and he is an ardent Liverpool fan.
Knowsley-born, he had been encouraged to enter the profession while at school and having taken his A-Levels applied to drama schools.
"Before I could take up a place I was offered the role in Dream Team," he explains.. "So I have put that on hold." He was given an acting AND a footballing audition.
"I only played schoolboy football but it was enough to get me the job."
He has moved to London, too, while his screen character is having an equally exciting time. "He comes from a troubled background and his mother owes money to gangsters," he says.. He has also been signed by a shady football agent.
Both characters will have to work hard in the new series. At the end of the last, Harchester United were relegated from the Premiership, having been penalised for match fixing.
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