With a cheeky smile and muscles in all the right places, The Block star Ricky has fast become this season’s resident heart-throb, but the Victorian plumber has also had more than his fair share of heartache.
He left home at 16 and turned his back on his parents amid allegations of a toxic home environment, only to lose his best friend seven years later. Lachy Beaton was killed by a drink driver at age 23 and his death changed Ricky forever.
“It took me a very long time to stop going to his grave and crying,” Ricky, 34, tells New Idea. “I was the same age. People kept telling me I needed time, and I had other mates who had lost their mates, and they said to let time heal.
“I stayed busy living off the fact that I had to do all the things we wanted to do together.”
“I was upset for months and I wasn’t sure I was ever going to get over it. But it turned out all those people were right, eventually time passes, and I knew Lachy didn’t want me sitting there at his tomb crying.”
Ricky says a big reason why he’s doing The Block with close friend Haydn is to honour Lachy. His death in 2012 at such a young age taught Ricky to take every opportunity life presents.
“I’ve always been pretty driven and determined and had a willingness to succeed, but knowing I had to do it for Lachy … I hope that at the end of this life he will be standing there applauding me and going, ‘well done, mate, you couldn’t have given it any more,’” he says.
Haydn, 37, is also no stranger to losing a loved one. His father Stephen died aged 56 from a brain tumour, three years before Ricky lost Lachy. The friends bonded over their grief, and became such good mates that Haydn named Ricky godfather of his daughter Matilda, who was born during their first week on The Block.
“Going through that different experience and being able to connect on that same level, not grieve together but support each other, was how we dealt with it,” Haydn tells New Idea. “We grieved together, partied together and watched sport together.”
Ricky adds: “I think the beautiful thing about Haydn and I is that we dress the way we dress because we love life and we like sparking up the room and making sure everyone around us enjoys themselves.
“Since 2012 I’ve made sure I’ve grasped everything with two hands. I never walk past an open door without at least having a look.”
