JOHN Sessions is wondering what awaits him when he returns to Scotland this Saturday for an "in conversation" event at the Glasgow Film Festival.

An Eamonn Andrews This is Your Life experience perhaps?

"I don't know whether I get the big red book. I might get the big red card. One's always interested to know how one is perceived."

Where do we start? The Sessions CV stretches from one- man shows and Spitting Image to working with Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York), Al Pacino (The Merchant of Venice), and James McAvoy (Filth). There is plenty of conversation to be had, and that's before we start on Robert Louis Stevenson and the Waverley.

Sessions, now 61 (Feel it? "Yeah, I look it too"), left Largs when he was three but returned often to Scotland because granny was still here, an aunt and uncle, and later a cousin.

"The only person I go up to Scotland to see now is Robbie Coltrane. Funnily enough, Robbie and I were out on one of the boats he had at the time and he said, 'Let's go down to Largs and get an ice cream at Nardini's.' I said, 'Robbie I can't do it, there's just too many ghosts'. There was no major tragedy; people got old and they died." Still, it would have been all "too nostalgic" for him.

The first adrenaline hit of performing arrived at school in Bedford. He and another boy were asked to improvise as Moses and the Pharoah. "I launched into this monologue and all the boys laughed their heads off. It was the most exhilarating feeling, at last I had my calling card at school, doing silly voices and impersonations and all the rest."

After a spell in academia in Canada he went to RADA. It was there he met his lifelong friend, Kenneth Branagh. Sessions' film career began in 1982 with the horror film The Sender, but it was not until 1986 that he found fame in Spitting Image, ITV's politics and puppets show. His 40-plus voice repertoire stretched from Prince Edward and Keef Richards to Laurence Olivier and Norman Tebbit. He loved the buzz of the programme, the last minute changes. "It was like 'hold the front page', it had that feeling of a newspaper about it."

He has stayed in television, most recently playing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in ITV's Mr Selfridge. Film, though, has added many a headline moment along the way, as when he was cast in Martin Scorsese's 2002 picture, Gangs of New York. On set, he was reunited with Day-Lewis, with whom he had filmed The Bounty in Tahiti.

"We had a wee chat about this, that, and the other, but Dan remained in his American accent. Fair enough, whatever it takes. The man's got three Oscars, he must be doing the right thing."

Gangs also offered a chance to see Scorsese in directorial action. "Scorsese was probably the most elegantly-dressed director. Usually directors show up in old anoraks or puffa jackets. Scorsese would always wear an immaculate lilac or scarlet shirt with black trousers and shoes. He looked like a very, very distinguished head waiter."

On The Merchant of Venice, Sessions had the chance to see Pacino work and sample the cooking of co-star Gregor Fisher. "Gregor is one of the funniest men in Britain, and a very fine chef. He was always going off buying saucepans and pasta making machines."

The two teamed up again later in Rab C Nesbitt.

Asked to name the highlight of his career, Sessions goes for his one man show about Napoleon, directed by Branagh.

"I should do another show before I'm too old. I've always fancied doing a show about Robert Louis Stevenson but I'm the wrong shape. I'm so short and a little bit overweight and he was very skinny. I remember playing James Joyce once at RADA and to try and suggest slimness I had baggier trousers with shorter legs and a baggier jacket with shorter arms in the hope this would make me look tall and skinny, but it didn't really."

Besides the good career times, there have been projects he would rather forget, such as the 1994 sitcom Nice Day at the Office. "Lamentable." Otherwise he has been lucky, he says. "Here I am, 32 years on and still doing it. The difficulty of staying in the business is quite daunting. I particularly advise friends whose daughters want to be actresses to try and think of something else because it is so tough for the girls."

All things considered, there is nothing else he would rather do. Well, maybe tootling around on a paddle steamer. "I'm a big fan of Clyde steamers. I went on them a lot when I was a child.."

Since we are in a This is Your Life mood, I ask him to recall his first performance. He was six, and his brother taped him playing a ukelele and singing Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley. "I didn't persevere sadly with the ukelele or otherwise I could have had a very different career."

But would he have had an "in conversation" event at the GFF? Discuss.

GFT, Saturday, February 22, 4pm. Tickets: GFT; www.glasgowfilm.org/festival; 0141 332 6535