John Sessions

John Marshall (11 January 1953 – 2 November 2020), better known by the stage name John Sessions, was a British actor and comedian. He was known for comedy improvisation in television shows such as ''Whose Line Is It Anyway?'', as a panellist on '' QI'', and as a character actor in numerous films, both in the UK and Hollywood.

Early life

John Sessions was born John Marshall on 11 January 1953, according to most sources in Largs, Ayrshire, Scotland. His family moved to Bedford, England, when he was three. His father was a gas engineer. He had an older brother, Bill, and a twin sister, Maggie.

Education

Sessions was educated at Bedford Modern School, an independent school for boys (now co-educational), and Verulam School, St Albans, followed by the University College of North Wales in Bangor, from which he graduated with an MA in English literature. At university, he had begun to appear to audiences with his comedy in shows such as "Look back in Bangor" and "Marshall Arts". He later studied for a PhD on John Cowper Powys at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, although he did not complete the doctorate.

This period in his life was unhappy. In a "Worst of Times" column for ''The Independent'' from around 1990, he talked of how the freezing Canadian weather had depressed him, he was smoking "far too many cigarettes" and "had a couple of disastrous flings", and described his PhD dissertation as "200 pages of rubbish".

Career

Sessions attended RADA in the late 1970s, studying alongside Kenneth Branagh; the two would work together on many occasions later in their careers. His name change occurred when he became a performer, owing to the presence of a John Marshall already on the Equity register. In the early 1980s, he worked on the small venue comedy circuit with largely improvised freewheeling fantasy monologues. He topped a double bill with French and Saunders during this period. He had a number of small parts in films including ''The Sender'' (1982), '' The Bounty'' (1984) and ''Castaway'' (1986).

Sessions played to his strengths in improvisation and comedy with his one-man stage show ''Napoleon'', which ran in London's West End for some time in the mid-1980s. He and Stephen Fry were the only two regular panellists on the original radio broadcast of ''Whose Line Is It Anyway?'' in the late 1980s. When the show, still hosted by Clive Anderson, made the transition to television, Fry departed from regular appearances, but Sessions remained the featured panellist for the first season. A frequent player in the second, he did not appear again after his two appearances in the third series.

A gifted impressionist who also voiced characters for ''Spitting Image'', he drew heavily on his extensive literary education and developed a reputation for being "a bit of a swot", being able to quote extensive passages of text and make endless cultural and historical references. His ready ability to switch between accents and personae meanwhile allowed his career in improvisation to flourish. On ''Whose Line Is It Anyway?'', his ability to affect the contrived witticisms of '' Restoration Comedy'' became an audience favourite. In 1987 he played Lionel Zipser in Channel 4's mini-series ''Porterhouse Blue''.

In 1989, he starred in his own one-man TV show, ''John Sessions''. Filmed at the Donmar Warehouse in London, the show involved Sessions performing before a live audience who were invited to nominate a person, a location and two objects from a selection, around which Sessions would improvise a surreal performance for the next half-hour. This series prompted two further one-man TV shows: ''John Sessions' Tall Tales'' (1991) and ''John Sessions' Likely Stories'' (1994). Although billed as improvisation, these were increasingly pre-planned. In an interview headlined 'Who The Hell Does John Sessions Think He Is?' in '' Q'' magazine in the early 1990s, he admitted that some of his improv was not entirely spontaneous, but that if it were advertised as scripted 'it had to be funnier'. 1991 also saw Sessions in the BBC drama ''Jute City'', a three-part thriller based around a sinister Masonic bunch of villains, co-starring with vocalist Fish (Derek W. Dick, singer in the first incarnation of rock band Marillion).

In 1996, he was commissioned by the Royal Academy of Arts to write "Paint, said Fred", the life of Frederic, Lord Leighton, the pre-eminent Victorian artist, in a one-man show that used his comic writing abilities and his gift for impersonation.

Sessions also starred in '' Stella Street'', a surreal "soap opera" comedy about a fantasy suburban British street inhabited by celebrities such as Michael Caine and Al Pacino, which he conceived with fellow impressionist Phil Cornwell, the two of them playing several parts in each episode.

Sessions later returned to formal acting, with parts ranging from James Boswell (to Robbie Coltrane's Samuel Johnson) in the UK TV comedy drama ''Boswell and Johnson's Tour of the Western Isles'' (1993) to Doctor Prunesquallor in the BBC
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