I’m currently writing from Crete in the Greek Islands. I’m just doing a spot of Island hopping on my way to Galipolli in Turkey for Anzac day.

I started in Athens, then went to Mykonos for Easter, Santorini and then here to Crete.

So far I can’t say that Greece has done a huge amount for me to be honest. In particular the Greek Islands’ reputation as the tropical paradise of Europe didn’t quite hold up for me. It might be good for Europe but I can’t help but compare the beaches to the glorious ones back in the magnificent Oz. It is a nice place, and is far better the being in London : ), but after growing up among the many Greeks in Australia nothing here is particularly new or exciting to me. In particular, I’ve already been eating all the local food for years anyway.

The highlight so far is an entertaining encounter I had while in Athens.

After spending an afternoon touristing around the Acropolis I was wandering through the streets of Athens on the way back to my room, having flashbacks about a dodgy Australian sitcom from the 90’s called ‘Acropolis Now’ (for those non-Aussies out there it was set in a Greek restaurant in Melbourne, based on the hilarious going-ons in the day-to-day lives of the typical young Greek-Australians who worked there).

Some of you aren’t going to believe this but the next thing I know I saw the star of Acropolis Now, Mr Nick Giannopoulos himself, walk past me into a shop. I didn’t think I really saw him, so I decided to stick my head in the store and see if I was hallucinating.

I walk into the store to find a camera crew set-up, filming him interviewing the store owner about the merchandising for the up-coming Athens Olympics.

It turns out that he was in there shooting a travel documentary called ‘Greece is the Word’ about Greece for channel 7 that will be aired in the lead up to the Olympics. After 10 minutes of waiting in the wings I had my requisite shot of the two of us taken and walked away musing about how much a weird world it is that I ran into him, the Aussie epitome of everything Greek, then and there, in the shadow of the Acropolis.

But wait, there’s more. A couple of days later I was having lunch at a remote beach on Mykonos when who happens to turn up but Nick Giannopoulos and his camera crew to film another scene.

After they recognised me, I ended up having a good chat to his camera crew who were a couple of Aussie boys my age (mostly because they were the only other Aussies I’d run into so far). It turned out that, to continue the coincidence, they were heading to Santorini next along with me.

Over the period of the next week I proceeded to run into them just about everywhere I went, be it tourist spots, ferries or bars. In the end I became good friends with the camera crew and a ‘vague’ acquaintance of Nick himself (although like the true celebrity stereotype, even though I ended up being welcomed in to their circle he never actually entered into a real conversation with me).

Besides making some good friends, the up-shot of this is that I essentially became the co-star of the documentary because I kept making all these cameo appearances in the background of all their shots. I’m looking forward to getting a copy of the show because it will virtually run like my own private holiday movie, showing me, everywhere I went, but shot professionally.

So those of you back in Oz, keep your eye out on Channel 7 (over two Saturday nights at 7.30) for a show called ‘Greece is the Word’ - starring Nick Giannopoulos and Ben Melbourne.