09/11/2020
The BBC News Channel reports that the gay actor and raconteur John Sessions has passed on at the age of 67. Best remembered for his panel game expertise on programmes such as Channel 4's “Whose Line is it Anyway?” and BBC-2s “QI”, Sessions was described as “funny and kind” by Meera Syal and by the staff of “QI”, which is currently hosted by lesbian comic Sandi Toksvig as having an “Incredible wit and encyclopaedic knowledge”. He had first taken his one man show to the stage as early as 1979, and then began to forge a career as an uncannily accurate impressionist for the ITV satirical programme Spitting Image, which started in the summer of 1984. He was also an actor, trained at RADA and his on screen accomplishments include parts in Porterhouse Blue, Gormenghast and playing the former Prime Minister Edward Heath in The Iron Lady. On radio, he cut his teeth on BBC Radio Scotland before many many appearances on panel shows on BBC Radio Four. Although proud of his Ayrshire roots, Mr Sessions had little time for Scottish Independence, and in rare forays into politics, he argued for the abolition of separate governance for Wales and Scotland and for British withdrawal of the European Union, a position that sometimes put him at loggerheads with other gay celebrities. Sessions was involuntarily outed by the tabloid press in 1994, during a period when relationships between gay people and the right wing papers were fractious to say the least, although increasingly being challenged by the radical direct action of groups such as OutRage! and the Lesbian Avengers. However, his sexuality had always been known in media circles and on London's gay scene where he starred in the AIDS era comedy My Night with Reg. The Guardian newspaper this week referred to the cruelty of the tabloid journalist who outed Mr Sessions, noting that his mother died very soon after the publication. The paper in question, the London Evening Standard has not apologised to Mr Sessions nor to the wider LGBTQ community for its reportage during that period. Mr Sessions' agent said that he had a heart complaint and that he passed on Monday 2nd November, which was coincidentally the thirty eighth anniversary of the launch of Channel Four, that avant garde network which brought him to national attention in the eighties. That's John Sessions, gay actor, entertainer and intellect, who has passed on at the age of sixty seven.
