From: Hamish Imlach/Ewan McVicar: Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice. Reminiscences of a Fat Folk Singer (1992), p. 141f:
"Among the characters of Boston was Mad Peter Johnson, an oddball who was part of the Johnson and Johnson family of Baby Powder fame. The family had had several US admirals and vice-admirals, so when Peter went into the navy to do his National Service he was treated with kid gloves. They put him on a little minesweeper where they could confine him and keep an eye on him.
There was only one mop, brush and bucket on this tiny boat. Mad Peter Johnson discovered that if he flung them overboard it took two or three weeks for them to requisition a new mop, brush and bucket. A battle of wits developed between him and the two petty officers who had the job of keeping him scrubbing, and he would get up in the middle of the night to defeat them.
Eventually the ship's morale went to hell, and he still had fifteen months of service to go. They sent him off to the mothball fleet, to a battleship in a dock in Massachusetts with an adjacent shed of grey paint, and thought, 'That'll take him fifteen months, he can't fuck up on that.' They forgot that there is a red lead undercoat. He started with trestles on the side of the battleship away from the pier, and painted polka dots and candy stripes all down the side of the battleship. He covered about fifty square yards before anyone noticed.
That was when he was certified, and became Mad Peter. His family cut him off without a penny, but didn't think to cut off his accounts with various Savile Row tailors. So for a year until the bill was sent in anyone who wanted a suit could order it on Peter's account. He bought about fifty suits and lived for a while by selling them.
Then he got into advertising and became the Marlboro Cowboy, the one with his foot on the corral rail and a scar on his cheek. After that he got a job dressing in a chicken suit [there's a photo of him in it], and going around to where people would come up to him and say, 'You are Schwartz's Chicken,' and he would give them a frozen chicken. He lost that job when a farmer discovered him chasing his bull in a country field, pelting the bull with frozen chickens.
Peter has made a couple of albums, and organises ceilidhs. The Irish singer Margaret Barry, a wonderful singer but nobody's chicken, was coming to Boston for a concert organised by Mad Peter, and he went to meet her at the airport and put on his proudest clothing, the chicken outfit. When he approached her she ran shrieking to the police. She eventually realised he was one of the real people, and when she was going to be deported because she had no work permit Mad Peter Johnson married her. She was in her seventies, he was in his twenties."
There may be other mentions of Peter, but without an index I can't find them just now. Still, this gives you an idea of what kind of person he is.