John Mackay, 26, works as a travel representative on the island of Aegina for a large British tour operator. Last Friday, I waited with John at the island's port for the afternoon ferry to Piraeus.

He was hard at work tossing smiles and filthy innuendoes at his clients. Everybody chortled, squealed and wheezed with laughter; they all agreed that, yes, they'd had the time of their lives and that, of course, they'd be back next year.

What they didn't know was that we had a long night ahead of us. The weekly transfer of tourists to and from Athens Airport starts at five o'clock in the afternoon and finishes, depending on whether anything goes wrong, between eight and twelve the next morning. John predicted his clients' good humour would quickly evaporate.

'You should see their faces,' he told me, ' when it finally dawns on them that they've got six hours to kill and all we're going to do is provide a place for their luggage and a bar to get pissed in.'

In Glyfada, after dropping his clients off at the transit hotel, John explained why he'd ended up in Aegina.

'I was working as an estate-agent,' he said, 'and making loads of money when the firm went bust and suddenly I was on the dole. Within a couple of months I'd lost my car, flat, girlfriend, everything I'd worked for.'

He smiled wryly and said, 'You can stuff London. Aegina's great despite the long hours and the lousy pay. And it's a lot better than being some statistic on a civil servant's chart.'

Ominously, however, as the recession worsens, more British holiday-makers have decided to stay at home. Three British tour operators have collapsed during the present tourist season: two of John's colleagues were made redundant and had to return home to an uncertain future. Another operator is expected to collapse in the next two months.

John wasn't worried by this: 'If the worst comes to the worst, I'll marry a Greek girl and inherit a taverna.'

While John enjoyed squid and retsina and a few hours sleep in a room provided by his company, his clients milled around the foyer of the hotel.

One group had wanted to see the Acropolis but had taken the wrong bus and given up. They sat and grumbled. Children played on arcade machines or ran in between the rows of suitcases. Couples swapped holiday stories and argued. Some went to have dinner. A communal singsong faltered and became a halfhearted lah-lahing. The girls behind the bar, all English, didn't want to chat.

By three, when John arrived to take them to the airport, ashtrays were overflowing and cans were stacked high on tables. A few men were unpleasantly drunk. One complained that it was a 'bleedin' fiasco'.

He had a point: his fellow-tourists, glassy-eyed or asleep, sprawled across sofas and suitcases, looked more like evacuees in the aftermath of a coup than ordinary British package tourists undergoing the ordinary British package holiday experience.

Not surprisingly the atmosphere was tense on the coach taking us to the airport. John said his good-byes quickly and we ran over to the Arrivals' Hall.

He straightened his tie, practiced winking and flashing spontaneous smiles, prepared his caring, reassuring expression and, narrating the sexual preferences and histories of the reps working on the Saronic islands, held his clipboard, emblazoned with his tour operator's logo, high in the air. We waited for the new consignment of tourists.

They trickled past customs looking pale and anxious.

John did his best to persuade each group that they were about to 'experience what is arguably one of the best islands in Greece'. Then, not flinching, he said that because it was a Greek national holiday or because the computer was down (or any excuse that sounded convincing) the ferries were running late and there would be a two hour delay.

Some grumbled that they hadn't been told about this when they bought their holidays. Yes, but it was out of his control and he was as annoyed, he said, as they were.

The airport filled up as the flights from Newcastle, Manchester and Gatwick arrived. It was a repeat of the earlier performance at the hotel. The Hall was less salubrious but John's new clients were happier: they had their holiday to look forward to and they'd discovered that they'd gone to the same school or had the same allergies or that they were also the kind of people who didn't usually take package holidays; they agreed that it was a small world.

Two hours later, the sun had risen, I was exhausted and John had been the life and soul of the party, almost without a rest, for 24 hours.

John loaded his clients onto the ferry, handed out welcome leaflets and chatted to those who were still awake.

He was coasting on a new wave of adrenaline and nudged me awake to point out two girls whom he thought could be 'right little crackers'.

An hour and a quarter later, as we reached Aegina, John was the best of friends with Sandra and Karen from Scunthorpe.

As I was leaving him on the jetty, he asked me whether I'd enjoyed myself. I told him it was an experience. He laughed. I asked him what kept him going.

The sun beamed down and the white church glared against the blue sea and the blue sky. 'It's a laugh,' he said. 'It sure beats working. And more than anything else, I like the idea of being in charge of Paradise.'