The World’s Tallest Family

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 Kleef-Bolton 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 — average 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 aladies 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