He’s 7ft., she’s 6ft. 5in. - and their kids...
Door frames, shelves and public transport don’t worry most people, but when you are the world’s tallest family, they’re a danger.
Keisha and Wilco van KleefBolton have a combined height of 13ft 5in. Seven foot of that is Wilco; his wife stretches the measuring tape to 6ft 5in.
Not surprisingly, the children are following in Mum and Dad’s (pretty huge) footsteps. Lucas is 4ft 5in at the age of six — aver-
Keisha and Wilco van Kleef-Bolton have a combined height of 13ft 5in. Seven foot of that is Wilco; his wife stretches the measuring tape to 6ft 5in.
age for a ten-year-old. Eva, four, is 3ft 7in, typical of a girl a year older. And at six weeks old, Baby Jonah is just two inches shy of 2ft long.
The children are destined to lives of stooping through doorways and retrieving things from high shelves for old ladies in supermarkets.
But what is it like to look down on everyone you meet? I decide to pay this extraordinary family a visit at their cosy two-bedroom home in Dagenham, Essex, to find out.
At 5ft 7in, I’m three inches taller than the average British woman, but I feel like an Oompa Loompa around Keisha and Wilco.
You wouldn’t want this pair sitting in front of you at the cinema — something they try to avoid.
‘We are mindful of that when we go out to see a show. We get tickets for the back row when we can,’ says Keisha, 33, ducking under the kitchen and living room doorways.
‘We bash our heads several times a year,’ she says. ‘Mostly we duck without thinking, but sometimes we misjudge.’
Wilco, 31, almost knocked himself out on the London Underground.
‘I didn’t realise the ceiling at the entrance of one set of stairs was lower than my head,’ he says. ‘I
‘It made me smile, so I posted back saying: “I’m 7ft — is that tall enough?”
bashed it quite hard and it really hurt. I arrived at work with blood dripping down the side of my face.’
Finding a car was equally taxing: they settled for a people carrier with specially adjusted head rests. ‘Most head rests sit at the bottom of our necks,’ says Wilco.
Their bicycles had to be imported from the Netherlands, home to the world’s tallest people — the saddles come up to my chest.
But everything else the couple owns is standard size, including their bed — they can’t fit larger items into their house.
Wilco sleeps with his feet sticking out of the end of the bed, while Keisha nods off in the foetal position. The list of hurdles this couple encounter is mind-boggling.
‘The biggest disadvantage is clothes,’ says Keisha. ‘We have to get them from specialist shops and websites, but even they don’t always cater for our height.’
‘I was constantly teased,’ she says. ‘At school I was head and shoulders above everyone. As for boys, they didn’t want to know. I thought I’d never get a boyfriend.’
Only when, at 18, she was headhunted by an American university for a basketball scholarship did Keisha start to see the advantages.
Thousands of miles away in Holland, another outsize adolescent was getting to grips with his height.
Already 6ft by the age of 12, Wilco was put on hormone medication to restrict his growth.
‘The doctor told me that without the medication I could have reached 8½ ft,’ he says. ‘I was perfectly healthy and in proportion, so they put it down to genetics — though my parents weren’t hugely tall, my grandparents and uncles were well above average height.’
Unlike Keisha, Wilco insists his height never bothered him. Frustrated by the lack of men her height, Keisha posted an advert on the online bulletin board of the Tall Persons Club asking for a dance partner.
And so in April 2001 Keisha posted her advert, and Wilco, who had arrived in London just two months earlier, read it.
‘It made me smile, so I posted back saying: “I’m 7ft — is that tall enough?”’ he says.
They married before the year was out, settling in Dagenham, where Keisha is an administrative assistant and Wilco a security guard.