The veteran New Zealand actor has returned to the city to perform in Fortune Theatre play My Dad's Boy.
Johnson lived in Dunedin for seven years in the 1980s, intending to be a University of Otago student but dropping out after three weeks to work for boat building firm Millar & Tunnage.
He secured a second job as the first roadie for Flying Nun Records bands The Chills and The Stones because he owned a van.
``It was a good time to be here - it was the beginning of the Dunedin Sound and I liked it.''
He drove The Chills to their first gig in Christchurch and agreed to be their roadie as long as he didn't have to unload the instruments.
In Dunedin, Johnson regularly protested against the proposed aluminium smelter at Aramoana in order to meet girls.
He appeared to be committed and caring.
``I was but not for the smelter.''
Johnson was living in Sydney last year and returned to his hometown Palmerston North to visit family. Fortune Theatre artistic director Jonathon Hendry gave him the script for My Dad's Boy and he was won over.
``It's a really good play.''
Johnson said the Otago Daily Times' review of the recent opening night performance, which said the play needed further development, was fair.
``It needed more work and more pace - it was a bit slow.''
Every day the play was improving and becoming ``tighter'' and ``more refined''. Its Dunedin run ends on March 4, Johnson said.
After Dunedin, the comedy would be seen in Tapanui, Invercargill, Arrowtown, Bannockburn, Wanaka, Alexandra and Ranfurly between March 7 and 15.
His path to becoming an actor began after he won a stand-up comedy competition and toured as the ``warm-up guy'' for comedy ensemble Funny Business.
A casting director saw him perform his routine and offered him a part in the movie The End of the Golden Weather, which was released in 1991.
The acting advice given to him by the film's director Ian Mune was ``the audience doesn't have to know what you're thinking - some actors become too obvious. The audience just need to be interested and if they follow you, they follow the story.''
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We met women, because you got a better level of conversation, also, we had already met. Generally, this was the opinion held by University women of those years: men protested as a tribal rite of passage, doing vicarious war. You will appreciate that women identified women were not impressed.