Who is Louis Cole?
Louis Cole was born in Epson, England. His mum was an IT trainer and his dad was a teacher. When he was 1 and a half, his sister Hilary was born - they've always been close. At school, him and his friend Tom pretended that their head teacher was Hitler and they were all spies in a nazi military camp. When he was 10 he started growing his hair. He often got mistaken for a girl on many occasions in the nex few years. He also had a friends called Andy Samuels. He says they were ''bursting with imagination''. They even built a homemade zipline out of Andys bedroom window! He grew up in church, and was inspired by Jesus' love for people and wanted to reflect this in his own life. At 14 he went on a family holiday to Malaysia. This changed his perspecive on the world. Inspired by his holiday, he entered HomeFront, decorating his bedroom like a tropical rainforest. It even featured his pet lizard and a working water fountain. He won, and says it was the proudest moment of his life.
At 16, Andy had just learned to drive. They borrowed Andys mums car and drove to Paris instead of going to school. This was the start of his love of roadtrips. Louis and his friends used to sit arounf in Andys bedroom every weekend, dreaming of how they could change the world. Around this time, his sister Darcey was born. With the age gap, he feels he learnt what it would be like to be a father.
He was now working as a freelace graphic designer for his neighbor. This encouraged his love for digital design. Shortly after he got his first laptop, and started earning from it. At 17, he stopped drinking to support a friend who was havin trouble with drinking at the time, and he never took up drinking again. After his A Levels he got his hair dreadlocked and went jungle trecking with his dad in Thailand. One night, they even got took by the thai mimitary and were held in an armoury of their military base.
Louis then started his gap year, volenteerig as a youth worker for his church. He saw himself as a role model for younger teenagers. Also this year h went to work experiance as a 3D animations worker, and after a month, got offered a job there. He then scrapped his plans for university.
Around this time he met Rob. He had a well paid job and a comfortable life but had given away everything he owned and dedicated his live to loveing and caring for people. Inspired by Robs work, he moved out his parents house and in with his friend and opened a house for anyone to visit. It was always full of colourfull characters. He met a homeless man called Dan, in London one day, and invited him to live with him. He slept under the stairs, and they became really good friends.
Later Louis chose to live in a homeless squat. It was full of herion addicts and there was no toilet. There he met another homeless man called Nick, who he invited to live with him in te house he was renting with friends. It was the crazy fn house he'd always dreamed of. His friend Mike taught him how to DJ and they bought a loud sound system. They even ordered 5000 plastic balls and make a ball pit in the living room!
For his 21st birthday he bought a minibus and drove around europe with 8 of his good friends. He says it was an amazing trip that had led them to many adventures together all pver the world. This year he retired from his job at sky. It was fun but he didnt want an office job. He said time was more valuble than money to him. Now he had no money and was living in his minibus, meaning he could travel more. He went to New Orleans in America for a month to help with the relief when it flooded. When he came back he got a job at his old primary school as a learining support assistant. He got fired for teaching the kids how to summersault in the playground.He went travveling in New Zealand and Australia and cohse to live homeles again in Australia. One night, he even woke up with a rat on his head. He came back and started more charity work in London, taking teenage gang members to Africa feeding orphans.
His next big dream was to buy a double decker bus and use it as a mobile youth club, so he borrowed money off his parents and bought one from eBay. However the engine blew up, but people donated money to help him buy a new one - The Boom Bus. He moved into the Boom Bus with his 2 teenage friends Nathaniel and Alan who'd been kicked out of home. They were running projects on the bus and even had a mobile recording studio. They travelled around London supporting local charities to engage with teenagers. To fund the bus projects, they started having bus parties at weeekends.
Louis moved into a house in a rough estate in London. There were drug dealers on his doorstep and he often got robbed. He says it was an inredibly creative household. He held monthly music events in his living room and called it 'The Purple Room'. They recorded it all. With that camera, his friends Steve and Matt recorded Louis eating weird things and uploaded them to youtube. "Those silly videos were about to massively impact my futre". This is how foodforlouis was born.
Later that year Louis and some friends bought a school bus and travelled 9000 miles across the USA. This was his biggest adventure yet. At the end of the year his youtube channel had a sudden explosion of popularity, and Sam Pepper contacted him. He introduced Louis to loads of other youtubers and he found a whole comunity of people just like him. Around this time his oarents and little sister moved to Brazil. Louid joined them for 3 months and helped with an education project at an orphanage. He was now earning money from his youtube videos. He flew out to a US youtube conference called vidcon, where he met even more youtubers. It was here he met Alfie, Marcus, Jack and Finn. they came back to the UK and became very close friends with Sam. They were living on the bus for 4 months, touring the UK, but then moved to Hollywood, LA. Here they met a guy calle Soy, who invited them to live with him. They flew out with no plans, just dreams and ambitions.