Born in
Wallingford, England, Cole grew up in London and attended
Elliott School in
Roehampton. After leaving the Elliott School, he worked as a professional guitarist and bass player for the next 15 years, playing in bands including
Jimmy the Hoover, The Directions and The Hollywood Killers. Cole turned to writing and wrote a pilot for
Tiger Aspect/
BBC, called
Embassy, starring
Robert Daws. He has multiple other TV credits, including episodes of
Night and Day,
Twisted Tales and
The Bill, feature film credits, including
Lovebite (
Ecosse Films, 2012) and
Pelican Blood (
Ecosse Films, 2010), as well as the TV movie
The Good Times Are Killing Me (
Shaftesbury Films, 2009). He wrote and executive produced the film
Ana, released in January 2020, starring
Andy Garcia and
Dafne Keen. Cole may be best known as the creator of the award-winning and the
BAFTA nominated British TV series
Mad Dogs, starring
Marc Warren,
Max Beesley,
John Simm and
Phil Glenister. He was the sole writer of all 14 episodes for the four UK seasons for
Sky TV, produced by
Left Bank Pictures. Cole was the executive producer and showrunner on the
Mad Dogs U.S. television series made by
Amazon Studios/
Sony Pictures Television. The show was streamed on Amazon in the US, Germany and the UK. Sony sold
Mad Dogs to 140 other territories. The series starred
Ben Chaplin,
Michael Imperioli,
Romany Malco,
Steve Zahn and
Billy Zane. Cole has been an advocate of Ethiopian choreographer Meseret Yirga for over 20 years. In 2019 he headed a fundraising campaign to build a community dance centre in Addis Ababa. Once the money was in place, the Meseret Yirga Dance Centre was built, is now open, and serves people from low income backgrounds and the disabled in the community. In 2022 Cole created, wrote and exec-produced ‘Rose & Layla’, a ten part TV comedy drama serial for MBC Studios, starring Egyptian TV and movie icon
Yousra and
Nelly Karim as two Cairo based private detectives. Shot in Cairo and directed by
Adrian Shergold the show was written in English and translated and made in Arabic. ==Personal life==