Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner but I am convinced when the Olympic Flame finally lights up London around midnight it will ignite an unprecedented fever that envelops the entire nation.

The 30th Olympiad is about to be propelled to the forefront of our consciousness, a wondrous festival of sport and culture like no other on Earth.

This will be my 12th Olympic Games, and one I have anticipated more than any, having followed the seven-year odyssey since International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge opened the white envelope containing the one word "London" in Singapore.

As yet London has no real conception idea of the magnitude of the jamboree that is about will dominate our lives for the best part of three weeks: a Coronation, a Royal Wedding, a Queen's Jubilee and a football World Cup rolled into one.

The last time the five-ringed circus was here, in austerity-gripped 1948, it was by necessity a low-key production. This time it truly will be the greatest sporting show we have ever seen, bringing evidence that London is the sports, cultural and entertainment capital of the globe – and confirm that as a nation which knows how to orchestrate an unforgettable celebration of human spirit, Britain has no peer.

We certainly know how to put on a show in the West End – now it is the turn of the East End to stage an unforgettable blockbuster.

The Opening Ceremony of London 1948, dubbed the "Austerity Games"

The progress of the Torch Relay through 1,000 cities, towns and villages has been a barometer of the goodwill for the Games. For this is not just a Cockney knees-up, but a glorious countrywide cavalcade of excellence.

The first gold medal has already been won, with London officially declared as the best-prepared Games. All it needs now is for everything to work – and hopefully it will, from transport to ticketing, ceremonials to crowd control.

Okay, so there maybe the occasional dampener from the heavens above, but as Mayor Boris Johnson says a spot of rain never hurt anyone. The only downpour that matters will be shower of praise when London pulls it off – as Lord Coe has promised – on time and under budget.

For thousands of young people, this will be a life-changing experience as the Games has pledged to leave a legacy of sporting opportunity inspired by the golden icons of 2012. Yes, there are still legacy issues to be resolved, not least the future of the Olympic Stadium, but for the next three weeks, these can go on the back burner as the running, jumping, splashing, shooting, pedalling and punching take centre stage.

The Torch Relay passes through the London borough of Barking and Dagenham

Of late, some have said the wheels are coming off the Coe bandwagon – and they do seem to have been wobbling a bit under the security shambles.

But as someone who has known Seb since his days as an impecunious 17-year-old student, I can vouch that there is no-one more capable of grabbing glorious victory over the last lap, even if a few hurdles are placed along the home straight.

Coe, who I first suggested to the then Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell as being the perfect candidate to rescue the show when the original bid seemed to be going belly-up, has masterminded the Games plan with professionalism and panache.

More than £300 million ($465 million/€386 million) has been invested in Olympic athletes, and the Paralympians whose own Games follow, over the past four years. No nation has been better funded or prepared. Britain's 542 competitors will go forth equipped for glory, but whether they will finish fourth, their targeted place in the medals table, or even higher will be answered when the Games closes on Sunday August 12.

The target is 48 medals, one more than Beijing, which included 19 golds. China is again expected to win the most, ahead of the United States, but there is now a genuine belief that Team GB could challenge Russia and Germany for third place.

My first Olympics was Tokyo, in 1964, a Games that remains etched in the consciousness as the last of the "pure" Olympics, untainted by drugs, terrorism, boycotts, security overkill or rampant commercialism.

London will not be like that, because the nature of the world, and sport, has changed.

And it may have to go some to beat the ambience of Athens in 2004, the clockwork efficiency of Beijing in 2008 and the all-round splendour of Sydney in 2000 – still my best-ever – but I believe the city has the capacity and the will to do it.

Boxing legend Muhammad Ali lights the Olympic Flame at the start of Atlanta 1996

The only Games I missed in almost five decades of Olympics reporting was Atlanta 1996 as I was deskbound sports editing The Observer newspaper. Colleagues say I was the lucky one, with the organisation a shambles, Gone With The Wind country providing the antithesis of southern hospitality and catastrophe when a crazed loner planted a bomb that killed one woman and injured over a hundred.

Miserable Games that are now best remembered for the quivering hand of Parkinson's-stricken Muhammad Ali lighting the Flame, a moment so poignant it even had United States President Bill Clinton in tears.

Whether Friday's final Torchbearer is an old Olympic flame like Sir Steve Redgrave, Dame Kelly Holmes, Daley Thompson, or a complete unknown from 2012's own Olympic heartland in the East End representing the cultural and ethnic diversity that are the buzzwords of these Games, remains a closely guarded secret to be revealed at the conclusion of the first of Danny Boyle's £80m ($124 million/€103 million) ceremonial showpieces.

I have even heard that an unprecedented five Flame lighters could be involved representing each of the Olympic rings to provide what British Olympic Association chief executive Andy Hunt has promised will be the wow factor.

And that one of these could be Ali himself, surely not by coincidence in town this week.

Whatever London has in store I doubt it will match my own most bizarre Games experience.

In 1980, then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had ordered GB to stay away from Moscow over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan but Sebastian Coe was among those who defied the Iron Lady, later to become his political mistress. Just as well, as he collected the first of his two 1500 metres gold medals in that "Chariots of Ire" duel with bitter rival Steve Ovett having lost out in his specialist 800m.

Seb Coe beats bitter rival Steve Ovett (vest 279) to 1,500 metres gold at Moscow 1980

I had interviewed Coe for a magazine which had a cover depicting the Olympic rings being incinerated by Soviet flame throwers. This was confiscated at Sheremetyevo airport as "bourgeois propaganda".

As it is an IOC obligation that journalists should have access to any material required for their work when covering the Games, I made a formal protest to them.

Next day I was summoned to a windowless room in the Kremlin where the magazine was handed back to me with a curt nod by a grim-faced apparatchik.

Returning to my hotel I found I had been upgraded to a very comfortable suite, big enough to hold a farewell party on the last night of the Games. As Georgian champagne popped a colleague wondered if the room might be bugged. Jokingly we raised our glasses and said: "To all our listeners – cheers!"

A few seconds later the phone rang and a Russian voice chuckled: "And cheers to you too, tovarich!"

Who says they don't have a sense of humour!

I hope in London there will be fun as well as Games – and doubtless Mayor Boris will provide some.

Of course the Flame has brought some baggage. Security will be unprecedented and may seem oppressive with the need to protect 17,000 athletes and over a million spectators. London will see the biggest mobilisation of militia police and security forces since World War Two.

All necessary, however, in the wake of the terrorist bombing which followed the day that London had secured the Games seven years ago.

At times London will seem like a war zone, but in essence the Olympics has always been a tug-of-war Games, torn between political chicanery and sporting endeavour, and inevitably encased in a ring of steel since that horrendous Tuesday, September 5, 1972 which witnessed the Munich Massacre.

There will be heartache and hassles but we do not want whinging to become the 27th Olympic sport, do we?

So will it all be worth it? Yes, absolutely. Once the cauldron flares into fire and Britain's gold rush begins all the aggro over those contentious Olympic Lanes and road closures will be forgotten and probably forgiven.

When the Flame finally dies and BoJo hands the Olympic Flag to the Mayor of Rio, President Rogge surely will proclaim London 2012 The Greatest Games Ever – and amid the cheers, the plaudits will be piled as high as the Shard, the European Union's tallest building.

So let the fun and Games begin. Curtain up. Overtures and athletes please!

Sit back and enjoy the show.

I know I will.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered 16 Summer and Winter Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.