Nelson Mandela was just a human being, a person like other people, and everyone relaxed. Within a minute, that sort of thing about the leader and the lead, the gap was closed, and that's a rare thing.

One of the things that I noticed with my own eyes was Nelson Mandela ability to engage with kings and queens and heads of state on the one hand, and his ability to engage with ordinary people, equally comfortably.

Nelson Mandela was just a human being, a person like other people, and everyone relaxed. Within a minute, that sort of thing about the leader and the lead, the gap was closed, and that's a rare thing.

Whenever anybody called Nelson Mandela a saint, he would say: "If by saint you mean a sinner who is trying to be better, then I'm a saint."

Many people theorize poverty, but so many elements of poverty, individually, for most people who theorize about poverty would be really difficult to even comprehend the individual things. Just take homelessness. If you are homeless, what does it mean not to have a post box where people can contact you; what does it mean not knowing where you're going to sleep at the end of the day; what does it mean not having a place where you can store what little you might possess. So dealing with homelessness in itself is a huge thing for most people who are commentators [on] or benefactors to poverty.

[Nelson] Mandela was very keen not to be understood as an exceptional person.

I was 15 years old when I first heard the name Mandela, or Madiba, as he is fondly known in Africa. In apartheid South Africa he was public enemy number one. Shrouded in secrecy, myth and rumour, the media called him 'The Black Pimpernel'.