80-year-old knees-up

Happy 80th birthday to the BBC World Service. It's been through a battering year in terms of cuts to services and jobs, but there's a noticeably more upbeat feel today, ahead of the move to Broadcasting House starting next month.

This morning, the regular morning editorial meeting moved to a temporary marquee in the car park of Bush House, and was broadcast live. Unsurprisingly, the discourse lacked the jokes and challenges that make private sessions bearable - and the setting looked like negotiations in a dimly-lit Bedouin tent. Phrases only heard at World Service were there ("that will resonate"), plus one shaft of unexpected frankness from BBC World editor Andrew Roy, who said his audience polling showed viewers were bored with the US Republican primaries. Thankfully, most American listeners were asleep.

If you get a chance, the live stream is buzzy - much funkier than you'd expect from an 80-year-old's party. One recent asset to World Service is Ros Atkins, host of World Have Your Say. This is a programme that irritates some old Bush hands, but you have to acknowledge that without him and the production team's skills, today's show wouldn't be half as much fun.

On the move to W1, WS commissioner Steve Titherington has been talking to staff organ Ariel "In preparation for this event I've been looking at a lot of old pictures from Bush, and the richness, diversity and exuberance of the place are plain to see. They show people from all parts of the world working together, enjoying being together, it's so engaging. In some ways the move will re-kindle some of the things seen in those old photos, W1 will give us more experiences, more people to interact with and more buzz."

If they can bottle the best bits of today, W1 will be fun.

• Latest figures say that over 7m people in Iran are tuning in to BBC Persian services on radio and television.  As a percentage of the population, that's about the same as Classic FM listening in the UK - a considerable testimony to the teams in London.