Stephen Cole

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the television presenter. For the writer see Stephen Cole (writer). For the game designer see Stephen V. Cole.

Stephen Cole (b. March 29, 1956 in Hereford) is a presenter for Al Jazeera English.

[edit] Early life

Stephen Cole started his career as a journalist for a Birmingham newspaper.

[edit] Broadcasting career

He is a former presenter of the BBC World programme Click Online from 2000-2005 and a regular newsreader on BBC World. During the strike action by BBC technical staff and journalists on the May 23, 2005, he was the stand-in presenter of BBC News coverage including presenting the Six O'Clock News and Ten O'Clock News bulletins on BBC One and BBC News 24. The bulletins surprisingly drew in more viewers than usual and led him to become known in the industry as the "Peter Pan of television". He is now the owner of his own firm, Cole Productions.

He had previously worked for Anglia Television's About Anglia, ITN and Sky News. He started as an anchor with BSkyB in 1989, moving to CNN in Atlanta, Georgia.

On the 2nd December 2005, he announced that he would be joining the Al Jazeera English news network.

Stephen's main interests outside of the work space are rugby, tennis and films. He is also something of a thespian, having once just missed out on the romantic lead in a major movie, by failing the fencing test.

He is married to Anne-Marie Cole, a BBC Radio 4 producer, who works for Above the Title Productions and Testbed Productions, and they have three sons named Dominic Sumner, Daniel and Richard.