1. John Sessions was born as John Marshall on 11 January 1953 to John and Esme Marshall.
28 Facts About John Sessions
2.
John Sessions's family was Scottish; his father was a gas engineer from Largs, Ayrshire, and his mother was from Glasgow.
3.
John Sessions had an older brother, Bill, and a twin sister, Maggie.
4.
John Sessions later studied for a PhD on John Cowper Powys at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, although he did not complete the doctorate.
5.
John Sessions attended RADA in the late 1970s, studying alongside Kenneth Branagh; the two would work together on many occasions later in their careers.
6.
John Sessions topped a double bill with French and Saunders during this period.
7.
John Sessions had a number of small parts in films including The Sender, The Bounty and Castaway.
8.
John 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.
9.
In 1994, John Sessions auditioned for the role of the Eighth Doctor in Doctor Who.
10.
John Sessions 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.
11.
John Sessions provided the voice of the Professor in The Adventures of Pinocchio in 1996.
12.
John Sessions appeared in several Shakespeare films, playing Macmorris in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, Philostrate in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Salerio in the movie The Merchant of Venice, with Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons.
13.
John Sessions contributed "Sonnet 62" to the 2002 compilation album When Love Speaks, which consists of famous actors and musicians interpreting Shakespearean sonnets and play excerpts.
14.
In between appearing in regular film and TV roles, John Sessions made appearances on Have I Got News for You and, more recently, as a semi-regular panellist on QI.
15.
John Sessions was one of four panellists, including the permanent Alan Davies, on the inaugural episode of QI, in which he demonstrated his effortless memory of the birth and death dates of various historical figures.
16.
On radio, John Sessions was a guest in December 1997 on the regular BBC Radio 3 show Private Passions, presented by Michael Berkeley, not as himself but as a 112-year-old Viennese percussionist called Manfred Sturmer, who told anecdotes so realistically that some listeners did not realise that the whole thing was a hoax.
17.
John Sessions had taken the role of narrating the popular Asterix stories for audiobook, since the death of Willie Rushton.
18.
John Sessions made a guest appearance in a special webcast version of Doctor Who, in a story called Death Comes to Time, in which he played General Tannis.
19.
John Sessions occasionally appeared in the BBC series Judge John Deed as barrister Brian Cantwell QC.
20.
In 2006, John Sessions presented some of the BBC's coverage of The Proms and featured in one of the two Jackanory specials, voicing the characters and playing the storyteller in the audiobook version of Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell's children's book Muddle Earth.
21.
John Sessions appeared in the teen drama TV show Skins in 2011 as one of two adopted fathers of Franky Fitzgerald.
22.
John Sessions appeared as a Brummie vicar in an episode of Outnumbered on BBC One.
23.
John Sessions had the distinction of playing two British prime ministers in films, Harold Wilson in Made in Dagenham and Edward Heath in The Iron Lady.
24.
John Sessions narrated a 10-part radio adaptation of The Adventures of Captain Bobo on Fun Kids in 2020, which was still running at the time of his death.
25.
John Sessions was outed in a 1994 Evening Standard article, while starring in the comedy My Night with Reg, a play set in London's gay community.
26.
John Sessions was critical of Scottish nationalism, and argued for the abolition of the Scottish, Welsh and European parliaments.
27.
John Sessions died at his home in Raynes Park, South London on 2 November 2020, aged 67.
28.
John Sessions's agent noted that he had a heart condition; his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, citing his death certificate, gives the exact cause of death as "an excess of aspirin, paracetamol, and caffeine".