Keith Duggan Athens LetterRemember the old Kirsty McColl song There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis? Well, yesterday at Omonia Square in Athens, there was a guy in McDonald's telling people he was Carl Lewis.

Except of course, he really was. Things aren't so tough for the 1980s sprint icon that he has taken to skewering Mackebabs for a living. Carl is an actor now but so far Kevin Spacey has not called to invite him to play Othello in the Donmar. So until he finds the right script, Lewis is content to hang out with corporate pals such as that ageless clown Ronald McDonald. Ordinary Athenians, drawn to the golden arches icon with thoughts of a cooling shake in mind, were vaguely stunned as they headed up the counters only to be greeted by King Carl. Hanging out, in the flesh, with ordinary people just after a Mickey D with cheese.

These kinds of things happen during the Games because when all is said and done, the Olympics are based on the premise of fantasy. At around 11 o'clock on Monday morning, there was Grant Hackett, the great Australian distance swimmer, loafing around outside our hotel. He had swapped the goggles for shades but wasn't exactly going for low profile, wearing a green and gold Australia top bearing the legend HACKETT. He smiled and posed for photographs now and again but for the most part he was left to his own devices.

In a café the same afternoon, Marie Jose Perec, the haughty French sprint stylist of yesteryear, could be found having lunch.

Irish people who had landed in Athens just hours before ended up in a late-night bar posing for photographs and, by the sounds of things, completely guzzling the champagne purchased by the Swedish high jumper Stefan Holm. He was wearing the gold medal he had won the previous evening and was happy to share his time and his bubbles with his Celtic friends.

You just don't know who you might meet on the streets when the Olympic family is in town. Jack Nicholson is bound to show up to see the American hoops team some time soon. Julia Roberts is reported to be in attendance. There was even a heady rumour that John O'Donoghue was out and about around the ancient streets of the Plaka.

The point is that the Olympics manage to perpetuate the ideal of family. It works on a simplistic and essentially daft principle of the world coming together as one big, happy family. That the stars who lit up these and previous summer Games mingle with ordinary folk on the streets for the duration of the fortnight adds to the notion that the Olympics are different.

Corruption and scandal dog the Olympics year in and year out. The whole thing is preposterously lavish and expensive. It highlights the advantages of those nations that have over those who do not. It is an absolute circus and much of it is phoney and gaudy and ridiculous. All these things are true and are moaned about regularly. Maybe it should be scaled back, with events more compressed and some kind of moratorium on the burden of debt placed on a host city.

But for all the faults, the Olympics manage to tap into something rare and touching not because of the IOC or the torch or the expensive venues but because the people on the ground believe in the spirit.

The Athenians have thrown open their city to the world in a manner that is both touching and complex. They are deeply proud of these Olympics but are by nature laid back and modest. They are probably too bashful to ask their visitors to declaim on the brilliance of their party, as happened in Sydney a lot. But the Greek people have been incredibly patient and sweet and welcoming.

As in Sydney four years ago, the volunteers are saints of people, standing for hours on end, often in the sun, each day and dealing with the same enquiries for hours on end with unfailing courtesy.

You see them then travelling home long after midnight on the immaculate new metro system Athens has provided for this fortnight. They collapse in seats and fall asleep, numb with exhaustion. And they are everywhere, meaning visitors are never left feeling lost. When you have 40,000 people wandering around a city just being pleasant to other people, it creates an atmosphere that is a bit disconcerting at first but is also truly warm.

And it does break down the international barrier thing in all sorts of oblique ways.

The other day in the canteen, I saw a Japanese photographer eating a plateful of Brussels sprouts. It was a fascinating sight because I had never realised that the sprout had a reputation that extended much east of the Shannon. Like so many others, I just assumed the sprout was confined to the melodrama that is the Irish Sunday dinner.

It wasn't polite but I have to admit that I stared as the Oriental photographer worked through his collection of mini-cabbages with speed that was both admirable and frightening.

Eventually he noticed me prying. Trapping one of the vegetables on the prongs of his fork, he held it in the air, scrutinised it and then began to laugh. For no reason at all, we both began to laugh at the gnarled and shrivelled little son of a bitch.

The most feared and hated green of them all had made us connect. But then, this was no ordinary sprout. It was an Olympic sprout.