He performed on the cabaret lounge circuit, made appearances on Ulster TV, released some singles and, aged 16, an LP of rebel and football songs called The Flags Are Out for Celtic.
[4] After school he moved to Dublin and worked in journalism, writing for the Evening Press and The Belfast Telegraph, and in Public Relations.
[4] He had several prose pieces published in the New Irish Writing section (edited by David Marcus) of the Evening Press, and won a Hennessy Literary Award (the judges being V. S. Pritchett and James Plunkett) in 1972.
Early publications under its imprint Co-op Books were Desmond Hogan's The Ikon Maker (1976) and Ronan Sheehan's Tennis Players (1977).
From the early 1980s to the mid 1990s, Johnston contributed poetry and a short story to the Scottish international literature, arts and affairs magazine, Cencrastus.