R.I.P.
Andy Mitchell
Forest Fan 1970 - 2009
Andy was a fitness instructor at DW Fitness, Swindon and a tennis coach at Wootton Bassett Tennis Club.
Andy would have been 39 the following week (18th July), he leaves a partner, Mel, and a 5 year-old son Harvey.
Andy and Mel had been together for over 10 years and were due to get married next year.
He was cremated on Friday 24th July and was dressed in his Nottingham Forest shirt with a Forest scarf draping the coffin.
The scarf was removed by son Harvey just prior to the act of cremation and now belongs to him.
The church was full to capacity for the service and many more who couldn't attend sent their best wishes.
Andy Mitchell was loved, admired and respected by so many people, he was just the sort of person you would want as a fan of the club,
he will be sorely missed.
Ketil Kristiansen
Forest Fan - 2004
Ketil was taken ill shortly before Christmas 2003 and, after a long and painful illness, slipped away peacefully. Ketil Kristiansen was buried during a simple humanist ceremony attended by family and close friends in his home town of Horten on July 13th 2004.
Ketil was an important supporter of the club in many ways, mainly as a founder member and later chair of the Scandinavian Branch Supporters’ Club. Over many years he organised regular trips across the North Sea for dozens of Reds fans from all over Scandinavia enabling them to watch Forest ‘in the flesh’ at the City Ground and at many other famous grounds all over the country. Ketil himself saw the Reds on around 50 different grounds and must have travelled many thousands of miles following the club.
He had begun supporting the club as a boy in the mid-60’s in Norway. In those old black-and-white days English First Division football was shown live via satellite each Saturday afternoon on Norwegian television and Ketil, taking after his father, became committed to the Forest cause. Indeed in the late 70’s when the opportunity arose to study in England for a PHD in Urban Planning there was no doubt about the University of choice for Ketil – Nottingham – simply so that he could get to watch Forest every week! His PHD eventually led to a career in urban and transportation planning back in Norway with the local authority in Oslo.
Ketil was proud to count himself a member of a wider community of Reds fans – the global one – linked together originally via e-mail and later by the web. A prominent member of the Forest mailing list since the early 90s, Ketil was a shining example of how lifelong personal friendships can be forged via the Internet, in fact he stayed with a fellow Forest fan in Belgium during Euro 2000 whom he ‘met’ through the list. His life, and the lives of those Reds he met and grew to know on his trips to Nottingham, was significantly enhanced by connecting with other supporters all over the world via computers. He was instrumental in setting up a Scandinavian Branch website – www.skogvokteren.org – and for many years wrote for, edited and produced their splendid full-colour Forest magazine ‘Skogvokteren’ (which is Norse for ‘Forester’).
Ketil displayed time and again his spontaneous natural generosity of spirit, never bettered than by the glorious hospitality he proffered to his friends when they attended, bearing gifts donated by the club, as unofficial Forest representatives at the Scandinavian Branch 10th Anniversary Celebrations in Oslo in June 2001. Ketil’s enthusiasm, hard work and organisational skills were forever to the fore in the way he organised branch activities, building the Scandinavian Branch membership to a peak of over 500 in the mid-1990s.
Ketil was also a devoted follower of his hometown football club, Horten FC. Before he was struck down by illness he had almost completed a detailed account of their centenary history and only just managed to get it finished before he died. This book has now been published. Indeed one of his last requests was to call for donations to the youth development programme of Horten FC. The Forest mailing list managed to collect nearly £150 for this causet.
Ketil also had many interests outside football. He was an enthusiastic and accomplished skier and sailor and loved the blues – on his trips over he would often appear in the audience for blues nights at the Running Horse, Canning Circus.