Background and career
Brendan Cole (born 23 April 1976) is a New Zealand ballroom dancer, specialising in Latin American dancing. He is most famous for appearing as a professional dancer on the BBC One show, Strictly Come Dancing from 2004 to 2017. From 2005 to 2009, he was a judge on the New Zealand version of the show, Dancing with the Stars.
Cole was born in 1976, in Christchurch, New Zealand. He learned to dance at the age of six, along his brother and sister. As a child, he won the Juvenile, Junior and Youth Champion of New Zealand. He moved to the United Kingdom when he was eighteen, where he studied the pasodoble, ballroom and ballet at Donaheys, Clayton, Manchester. Before becoming a professional dancer Cole was a builder and roof layer, having left school at 17. He danced with Camilla Dallerup, a fellow contestant on the BBC's earlier long-running show Come Dancing, as amateurs from 1996 to 1999, and professional from 2002 to 2004. Despite Dallerup being Danish-born, they competed in Latin for New Zealand, for seven years. In 2002, they won the Professional Latin New Zealand National Championships in Auckland. In 2003, they won the Professional Latin Universal Open in Frimley Green, England. and the BATD English Championships in Watford. The same year they won the New Zealand Closed National Championships in Wellington, and won the Taiwan International in Taipei. In the winter of 2004, Cole had his first acting experience in a feature film: Everything to Dance for alongside Sasha Jackson, Travis Oliver and Sally Reeve. In 2009, Cole appeared on the New Zealand travel show Intrepid Journeys, however, during a hunting lesson filmed in Vanuatu, he was shown killing and eating a chicken, prompting international news coverage. In October 2019, he competed in The X Factor: Celebrity alongside Jeremy Edwards.
In 2010, Cole married Zoe Hobbs, a British model, who gave birth to their first child, daughter Aurelia, on Christmas Day 2012. In March 2018, Zoe gave birth to their son Danté. The family live in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire (2015).
In summer 2006, he joined ITV's Love Island and became the runner-up when the show ended on 28 August 2006. Also in that year, he appeared as a guest judge on the fourth episode of Britain's Next Top Model, where he worked with the remaining 10 contestants to teach ballroom dancing prior to judging. In January 2007, Cole appeared on the BBC's duet show Just the Two of Us as a celebrity, with Beverley Knight as his professional partner. They came second. Cole represented the United Kingdom at the first Eurovision Dance Contest in September 2007. His dance partner was Camilla Dallerup. The couple were highly praised by British judges yet only managed to finish fifteenth out of the sixteen entrants. In 2010, he was a celebrity guest team captain on What Do Kids Know? along with Rufus Hound, Joe Swash and Sara Cox on Watch. In 2019, he participated in Pilgrimage: Road to Rome, as self-described atheist. In 2022, he appeared as a contestant on the fourteenth series of Dancing on Ice and was partnered with Vanessa Bauer. Cole reached the final and placed second.
Cole has judged New Zealand's version of Strictly Come Dancing, Dancing with the Stars, 2005–2009. In the years when Craig Revel Horwood was one of the other judges the two men's opinions and scores were frequently markedly different.
Highest and lowest scoring performances per dance
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
