John Sessions born 11 January 1953John Sessions is a Scottish actor and comedian. He is best known for comedy improvisation in television shows such as Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Sessions was born John Gibb Marshall and spent some of his earliest years in Kempston, Bedford. He changed his name when he became a performer as there was already a John Marshall on the Equity register.
He graduated with an MA from the University of Wales and later studied for a PhD from in Canada. From later interviews and references in his work it appears this latter period was an unhappy one.
He attended RADA and in the early 1980s held small roles in films including The Bounty (1984, with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins) and Castaway (1986). Not appearing particularly comfortable in these roles however, he played to his strengths in improvisation and comedy with his one-man stage show, which ran in London's West End for some time in the mid-1980s.
Sessions 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 several seasons. A gifted impressionist (he 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a reputation for being 'a bit of a swot', being able to quote extensive passages of text and make endless cultural and historical references.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.
By 1989 he was starring in own one-man TV shows, initially based on audience-suggested improvisation although these were increasingly pre-planned rather than improvisational and ultimately Sessions grew weary of this kind of performance (as did the viewing public). More successful was Stella Street, a surreal 'soap opera' about a suburban British street inhabited by celebrities like Michael Caine and Al Pacino.
Increasingly Sessions has returned to formal acting. In between appearing in regular film and TV roles Sessions has made appearances on Have I Got News For You and, more recently, as a semi-regular panellist on QI. He continues to appear regularly on BBC radio. In 2006 he presented some of the BBC's coverage of The Proms, and featured in one of the 2 Jackanory specials, voicing the characters and playing the storyteller in Muddle Earth.