Paul Neil Milne Johnstone
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Paul Neil Milne Johnstone (c. 1952 -April 2004) was a British poet and schoolmate of science-fiction author Douglas Adams. His student writings were described as pretentious by some of his peers, and Adams made him the butt of a joke in the earliest versions of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as he was known as "Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Sussex".
Johnstone attended Brentwood School, Essex, with Adams, and the two received awards for English in the same year. Johnstone later won a scholarship to study at Cambridge University (as did Adams).
Johnstone went on to achieve moderate success in the poetry world as an editor and festival organizer; he died of pancreatic failure, almost three years after Adams' death, sadly reflecting the fate of his fictional rival Grunthos the Flatulent.
[edit] Worst poet
In 1978 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, eventually published in other versions for various media, made its first appearance as an audio play that was broadcast on radio, and then published as a printed script and as phonographic recordings. All versions of the story feature a fictional high-technology travel guide whose title (at least in English) is identical to that of the story, and among its subjects are hazards that include having to listen to really bad poetry. Two characters are forced to listen to poetry of the alien Vogon race, and the story cites the guide as authority on the worst forms of poetry in the universe. In that context, the third and second worst are stated as, respectively, those of the Vogons and of the Azgoths of Kria.
As first released, the audio play has the guide say the "worst poetry of all" is that of a poet otherwise indistinguishable from Johnstone. M.J. Simpson, a fan and biographer of Adams, reports at second or third hand that the real Johnstone found citation as the worst poet in the universe primarily "amusing"; in any case, he forcefully insisted that his then current residence address not be used.[citation needed] In response, all subsequent pressings have that portion of the recording garbled into nonsense, while subsequent printings of the script and the later-released realizations of the story change the name and address of the worst poet to approximately as follows:
| (original script and recording) | Paul | Neil | Milne Johnstone, | Beehive | Court, | Redbridge, Essex, England IL1 3RR |
| (revised script) | Paula | Nancy | Millstone Jennings, | 37 Wasp | Villas, | Greenbridge, Essex, England GB10 1LL |
The poem to which Douglas Adams indirectly referred in the original radio series (and directly referred in the television series) is as follows:
- The dead swans lay in the stagnant pool.
- They lay. They rotted. They turned
- Around occasionally.
- Bits of flesh dropped off them from
- Time to time.
- And sank into the pool's mire.
- They also smelt a great deal.
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