THE MIMIC (REMEMBERING JOHN SESSIONS,)

For a brief period in the late 1980s and early 90s, John Sessions was one of Britain's most admired mimics.

A comedian and actor, he contributed to the original 'Spitting Image' on ITV.

His one man shows and appearances on Channel 4's improv show 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' and his hit BBC2 show 'Stella Street' catapulted him into the public eye, showing a mischievous sense of humour, a great ear for accents and an even sharper observational eye.

Sessions also had a sharp intellect which shone through his work.

And it was tendency to take two antithetical concepts like Terry Wogan starring alongside Burt Lancaster, Anthony Quinn and Tony Curtis in a Roman epic or imagining 'Das Boot' in the form of a kazoo during a recording of 'West Side Story' that delighted some people but also attracted brickbats.

Born John Gibb Marshall in Largs in Ayrshire, Scotland in 1953, he would train as an actor with his friend Kenneth Branagh at RADA and go on to work with directors like Nic Roeg, Michael Radford and Martin Scorsese and actors like Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Robert de Niro.

Raised in Bedford in England from the age of three, he had a twin sister, an older brother and a father who was an engineer.

Sessions later recalled in a 2017 interview with The Guardian that he was a "strange little boy" who feared his father's temper when he couldn't solve mathematical problems and who tended to live in a fantasy world of his own.

A gay man, he kept his sexuality from his parents for many years - although he recalled coming out to his mum at the age of 18 while drunk and then backtracking after she reacted with horror.

Sessions was later outed by the London Evening Standard while admitting his sexuality during an interview to promote a 1994 production of Kevyn Eliot's 'My Night With Reg' at the Royal Court. 

Sessions studied English literature at the University College of North Wales in Bangor where he started to dabble in comedy.

He went to Hamilton in Ontario to study for a PhD but did not complete his thesis, finding the Canadian winter too depressing.

He decided instead to pursue a career in acting and comedy, securing a place at RADA and falling in with Branagh.

Determined to pursue a dual career, he would later muse that he ended up falling between two stools.

Actors tended to view him as a comic and vice versa and he would later admit to having quite a complex around actors of the calibre of Michael Gambon.

Sessions changed his name because John Marshall was already registered with Equity and he worked the comedy circuit with Rik Mayall and French and Saunders building a reputation for a distinctive brand of freewheeling, improvised comedy.

There were minor roles in movies like Roger Christian's cult 1982 horror film 'The Sender,' Roger Donaldson's 'The Bounty' in 1984 with Mel Gibson, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Olivier, Daniel Day Lewis and Liam Neeson, Nic Roeg's 'Castaway' with Amanda Donohoe and Oliver Reed and Tom Bussmann's satire 'Whoops Apocalypse' with Peter Cook, Loretta Swit, Herbert Lom and Graeme Garden.

He was one of the performers on the BBC2's sketch show 'Laugh? I Nearly Paid My Licence Fee' with Robbie Coltrane, Louise Gold and Ron Bain.

However it was Branagh, now a rising star who was being touted as the next Olivier, who was to bring Sessions' gift for mimicry to wider attention with his acclaimed Renaissance Theatre Company one man show 'The Life of Napoleon'.

Channel 4 broadcast a very imaginative one man, comedy improv show which saw him poke fun at Meryl Streep, Lindsay Anderson, Leonard Bernstein, J M W Turner and imagine the Devil trading Hell for a quiet life on a remote Scottish lighthouse. 

This paved the way for the commissioning by Channel 4 of the popular improv show 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' which saw him pit his skills against the likes of Stephen Fry, Jonathan Pryce and The Comedy Store Players who included Paul Merton, Josie Lawrence and Tony Slattery.

Sessions was also a regular contributor to the satirical puppet show 'Spitting Image' on ITV, providing the voices for the Rev Ian Paisley, Pope John Paul II, Prince Edward, Bob Geldof, Orson Welles, Jeffrey Archer and Jimmy Tarbuck - among others.

This saw him test his gift for mimicry against the likes of Steve Coogan, Rory Bremner, Alistair McGowan, Harry Enfield, John Thomson, Kate Robbins, Jon Culshaw, Jan Ravens, Chris Barrie and Steve Mallon.

There was a high profile role too as the sexually frustrated Cambridge undergrad Zipser in Channel 4's Tom Sharpe comedy 'Porterhouse Blue' with David Jason, Ian Richardson, Gryff Rhys Jones and Paula Jacobs.

Cast as MacMorris in Kenneth Branagh's 1989 Oscar nominated directorial debut 'Henry V' with Branagh, Emma Thompson, Ian Holm, Derek Jacobi, Christian Bale and Robbie Coltrane, Sessions was riding high, appearing on chat shows.

However his fusion of highbrow and pop culture references in comedy began to attract criticism from some who saw it as smug and intellectual showing off.

Viz Comic featured a comic strip where their character Roger Mellie, The Man on the Telly beat him up.

Even his friends in 'Spitting Image' created a John Sessions puppet who crawled up his own backside.

An improvised BBC2 series 'John Sessions' Tall Tales,' in 1991 saw him leave 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' which would go on to great success in the US.

There was also a shortlived BBC2 show 'John Sessions' Likely Stories' in 1994.

The show attracted mixed reviews.

He would later describe himself as "punchable", observing in an interview with The Independent in 2013 that his friend Stephen Fry "manages to be so much more demotic".

"He wears his knowledge very lightly. I tend to sound a bit more like, well, a creep really. It's my imparting of the information with a certain little bristle of pride or something."

Sessions would also be the butt of Ricky Gervais' humour, with David Brent in 'The Office' citing him as a comic genius.

But he would enjoy a hit in 1997 with the BBC2 sitcom 'Stella Street' with Phil Cornwell in which they played several celebrities living in a London street.

This saw their versions of Jimmy Hill, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Michael Caine rubbing shoulders in the local supermarket with Alan Rickman, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Tony Blackburn and Patrick Moore.

A ratings success, it ran for four seasons and spawned a Peter Richardson directed 2004 movie which failed to win over US critics and audiences.

He would later tell the Guardian:"I had a twinkly couple of years but then I ran out of steam.

"I turned 40. As I was getting older, I wasn't getting more confident. I got less confident. I lost my way."

During the run of 'My Night with Reg,' Sessions developed stage fright.

He took minor guest roles in TV sitcoms and dramas and in movies of varying quality.

These included shows such as Channel 4's 'Shameless,' 'Skins' and 'Friday Night Dinner,'  BBC1's 'One Foot in the Grave,' 'Randall and Hopkirk Deceased,' 'The Inspector Lynley Mysteries,' 'Dalziel and Pascoe,' 'Judge John Deed,' 'Hotel Babylon,''New Tricks,' 'Sherlock,' 'Doctor Who' and 'Death in Paradise,' BBC2's 'Upstart Crow,' ITV's 'The New Statesman,' 'Midsomer Murders,' 'Lewis' and 'Victoria,' the Starz channel's 'Outlander,' Sky Atlantic's 'Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge' and Sky One's 'Moone Boy'.

There would also be memorable supporting turns as Geoffrey Howe in BBC2's 'Margaret' in 2009 with Lindsay Duncan and James Fox and as Arthur Lowe in BBC2's 'We're Doomed! The Dad's Army Story' in 2015 with Richard Dormer and Paul Ritter.

And he would occasionally pop up as a panelist on shows like 'QI' with Stephen Fry and 'Have I Got News For You'. 

Among the films he appeared in were Branagh's 'In the Bleak Midwinter,' Michael Hoffman's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' with Kevin Kline and Michelle Pfeiffer, Martin Scorsese's 'Gangs of New York,' Michael Radford's 'The Merchant of Venice' with Al Pacino and Phyllida Lloyd's 'The Iron Lady' with Meryl Streep in which he played Ted Heath.

He also surfaced in Robert de Niro's 'The Good Shepherd' with Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, Bill Condon's 'Mr Holmes' with Ian McKellen, Jon S Baird's 'Filth' with James MacAvoy, as the villain in the Simon Cowell produced 'Pudsey the Dog - The Movie', as a gay peer in Brian Helgeland's Kray twins movie 'Legend' with Tom Hardy and Stephen Frears' 'Florence Foster Jenkins' with Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant.

Always self-depricating and self-critical in interviews, Sessions was always quite candid about his faults.

But he was also a good storyteller with a good flow of stories about luvvies he encountered like Richard Briers appearing alongside Robert de Niro in Branagh's 'Mary Shelley's Frankenstein' or his encounter with Al Pacino on 'The Merchant of Venice'.

In later years, he was vocal in his support of UKIP and loathing of the European Union, Scottish independence and devolution.

That surprised many but he was still treasured by some of his fellow performers.

Among those leading tributes today was the broadcaster Danny Baker who described him as "terrific company always and a true talent".

That talent didn't always sit easily with John Sessions but it was remarkable nevertheless.

(John Sessions passed away at the age of 67 on November 2, 2020)