Kyle and Garry Ratcliffe first came to Attitude’s attention when they featured on Nick Knowles’s DIY SOS The Big Build, which aired on BBC1 in 2016.
Out and proud husbands, and prouder-still fathers to four adopted children, each with a complex and life-limiting medical condition, the sight of their two-bedroom bungalow being dismantled and rebuilt as a new home with five bedrooms to accommodate such a family was enough to melt our hearts.
What else could we do but bestow an Attitude Pride Award on this wonderful family? But there was more to come.
First, the event’s host back then in 2018 – TV’s Judge Rob Rinder – was so taken with the couple’s love and generosity that he agreed to be patron of their charity, Curly’s Legacy, named after the couple’s son Curtis.
Set on the Isle of Sheppey, in Kent, the charity is part miniature farm and part memory-making holiday home.
At that time, Attitude publisher Darren Styles was in the process of setting up the Attitude Magazine Foundation.
And the Ratcliffes were exactly the sort of people he wanted to help.
“All any of us want to do is make a difference,” Darren says, “and Kyle and Garry explained to me that the miniature farm they’d established through their charity was generating a small surplus of funds each year, which they were putting towards the running of a new project, Curly’s Caravan.
“The caravan was intended to provide holidays for families who otherwise couldn’t afford or access such a thing – be it those with little or no income, those with disabled children or even life-limiting conditions.
“As a kid, I holidayed in a caravan at Herne Bay every year, so how could I resist?”
It took another 12 months before the Attitude Magazine Foundation was fully up and running, but after a prize draw at the 2019 Pride Awards – and thanks to the Attitude Magazine Foundation doubling the proceeds, and some very generous personal donations -- Curly’s Caravan took home £10,000. Enough to get them to their target.
“Without the Attitude Magazine Foundation, we’d still be trying to raise the money,” says Garry. “Instead, even in Coronavirus-interrupted 2020, with all the travel restrictions that’s entailed, more than 40 families have been able to make memories in Curly’s Caravan, with holidays or short breaks.”
He adds, solemnly: “A number of those users have life-limiting conditions, so these might not have been opportunities we’d be able to share tomorrow.”
Rob Rinder has been to cast his eye over Curly’s Legacy, which he described as Noah’s Ark on steroids! We’re not entirely sure he got on with all the animals but judge (see what we did there?) for yourself by visiting youtube.com/watch?v=MSXOq0MQi1s.