Fuckin' yes!

Please pardon the French, as the unfortunate saying goes, but this has to have been one of the most exciting days I've ever had in the newsroom, if not my whole time in the BBC.

All morning we'd been hanging on every word to come from the International Olympic Committee meeting in Singapore, as we caught the tail end of the presentations. At first glance Seb Coe's very simple presentation looked almost apologetic next to the extravagance of Luc Besson's mini-movie for the Paris bid. I wthought we were sure to lose.

Then the painful minutiae of the voting system explained time and again for all those IOC members who hadn't quite caught it the third time over.

And the votes themselves with hearts in mouths as one by one Moscow, New York and Moscow were knocked out of the competition.

Then nothing but silence for an hour or more, as the bastards kept the results of the final ballot to themselves until they could set up the big reveal. After the break: if it's good enough for Who Wants to be a Millionaire, it's good enough for the IOC.

So when Jacques Rogge announced the games would be coming to London, it was just a magical moment.

Cries of "Yes!" and applause went up spontaneously across the office. (This has to be one of very few places of employment where the watching of television at one's workstation is actively encouraged.)

For months, battles have been raging between those excited by the prospect of London 2012, and the doom merchants and naysayers who could see only congested public transport, irritating tourists, and inevitable humiliation as incompetent Britain drops the most keenly contested Olympic ball in front of a world audience.

But I believe London 2012 will be phenomenal. Apart from the compelling sport, massive urban regeneration, radically improved infrastructure and very likely rise in house prices, the truly exciting thing is the fact that the whole world will be arriving in our city. The already cosmopolitan nature will be magnified a hundred fold as the entire globe focuses on our backyard. What could be more exhilarating than that?

In the long run, I'd very much like to be part of the Games, even just a tiny speck, hopefully from within my current organisation - host broadcasters, of course.

Seven years and counting. There's a lot to be done. And I want to see that it's done right.

But for now, just fucking yeah...