I don't have a mentor as such, but the person that would come to mind when I have a serious problem is Nelson Mandela.

Mandela is truly unique. He never appeared to want to become a leader of a country. He was forced into that position, and even when he sacrificed his whole life and came out of jail, he didn't take the top job, he took the assistant top job. And unlike all the other bastards who run Africa, who end up staying for life, he walked away at the end of it.

He is the only person at the top table that I have ever heard about, met, read about, or been aware of that has real moral integrity. We don't have that kind of leadership in Ireland, there's nobody on the world scene, and I get ill when I think about the United Nations.

Do you take practical tips from Mandela's leadership style?

He doesn't influence me like that. The people who influence my actions are the poor that I meet. If I'm in Darfur and I meet a woman who's lost four of her children, well then I'm influenced to try and get the Irish government to force the Chinese to relax their grip and let the UN soldiers in.

I'm impressed by what the Goalies do - the doctors and nurses and engineers. They influence me to direct the organisation in certain ways.

So I don't have Mandela's book by the bedside or anything. On that front I'm a more practical hombre.

So how does he affect you?

When anything happens - Darfur, the Ethiopian famine of '84, the Cambodian disaster of '78, or the Rwandan genocide - Mandela's name is always on my mind and on my lips. I do think, "what would Mandela do?" and I wish there was someone like him to take the lead.

After the tsunami the world was leaderless, and that's why the corrupt governments got all the money. There was nobody with the sort of moral force that Mandela had. We all want Eric Cantona on our team, and we all want Tiger Woods. In the same way, Mandela is the best and it's because there's simply no other leader on the planet who cares.

Are there any future 'Mandelas' on the horizon?

Every talk I give to young people I find they have no faith in the older generation, and I always hope that one of those guys or girls will become a Mandela-type person. A few Mandelas on the world stage would make my job easier.

In conversation with Patrick Freyne