His health was put under strain by the workload and he suffered a heart attack in February 1984. Returning to report on that year's conference season, he covered the Brighton hotel bombing, getting a "memorable" interview with Thatcher on the pavement in its immediate aftermath, in which she declares that the Tory conference would take place as normal. An astute observer of the political scene, Cole was one of the earliest to forecast Thatcher's resignation as Prime Minister in 1990, in what McKie refers to as "perhaps his greatest exclusive." Donald Macintyre writes that he "did more than any single figure to create popular understanding of the turbulent 1980s".