He passed away on from a heart attack on Monday. In a statement issued at midday on Tuesday, his agent Alex Irwin said that Sessions had “died at his home in South London from a heart condition”.
Sessions has a long comedy-related CV. He provided voices for Spitting Image in the 1980s, and appeared as a perform on improv show Whose Line Is It Anyway?.
He co-wrote and starred in cult hit impressions-based sitcom Stella Street, which ran for four series on BBC Two between 1997 and 2001.
He’s also appeared on QI as a panellist, and in recent years has had guest roles in sitcoms such as Outnumbered, Rab C. Nesbitt and Friday Night Dinner.
In 2018 he presented Six Degrees Of John Sessions on Radio 4, and has also recently starred in the station’s sci-fi sitcom Quanderhorn as characters including Churchill. A regular on Radio 4, he also played DH Lollipop in the long-running series Gloomsbury.
Sessions was born in Ayrshire in 1953, and studied alongside Kenneth Branagh at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London in the late 1970s.
Sessions was openly gay, having been outed in 1994 by the Evening Standard while appearing in the Royal Court Theatre’s My Night With Reg, a comedy about gay life in London.
He has a twin sister, Maggie, and an older brother.