It seems that the whole towel bit is taken from real life. Here's the
scoop from DNA in an interview from 1987:
'I was vacationing with friends in Greece some years back. Every
morning they'd have to sit around and wait for me because I
couldn't find my blessed towel. It seemed to epitomise my
disorganised state of being. I came to feel that someone really
together, one who was well organised, would always know where
his towel was. I thought of it as a Universal Truth.'
-Paradyne