By Charles Starmer-Smith

Readers have named their most Mandela-like figures in our South Africa flights competition.

Mother Teresa garnered more votes than Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Sir Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi ? even Jesus Christ.
Mother Teresa has beaten off strong competition to be awarded the mantle of the most inspirational figure of all time by Telegraph readers.

Last month, Telegraph Travel and South African Airways launched a campaign to find the world’s 90 most inspirational icons, in celebration of Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday on July 18.

Readers were invited to vote for the people – living or dead – who have best demonstrated Mandela’s key characteristics: courage, dignity, humility, persistence, forgiveness and kindness.

You chose the Roman Catholic nun Mother Teresa, who was born in Albania, as your leading icon, ahead of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Winston Churchill.

John Lennon, Bob Marley and Sir Elton John were your favourite icons from the world of music; you voted Muhammad Ali, Sir Steve Redgrave, Jesse Owens, Ellen MacArthur and Tiger Woods as your greatest sporting heroes.

In politics, the most popular figures were Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Churchill, while in science the most highly placed were Sir Alexander Fleming, Albert Einstein and Marie Curie.

Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur and Isambard Kingdom Brunel all finished below names more familiar to the MTV generation: Jamie Oliver, Damien Hirst and Oprah Winfrey – she was in 31st position between the footballers Pele and Bobby Moore. Leading figures who narrowly missed out on the top 90 included David Livingstone, Beethoven and Yehudi Menuhin.

The inspirational 90

1 Mother Teresa

2 Archbishop Desmond Tutu

3 Sir Winston Churchill

4 Mahatma Gandhi

5 Sir Alexander Fleming

6 Muhammad Ali

7 Martin Luther King

8 John Lennon

9 Albert Einstein

10 Marie Curie

11 Sir Steve Redgrave

12 Jesse Owens

13 Dr Christiaan Barnard

14 Oscar Schindler

15 Bob Marley

16 The 14th Dalai Lama

17 Antonio Gaudi

18 Tim Berners-Lee

19 Aung San Suu Kyi

20 Diana, Princess of Wales

21 Audrey Hepburn

22 Sir Elton John

23 Myriam Makeba

24 Ellen MacArthur

25 Tiger Woods

26 Steve Biko

27 F W de Klerk

28 Maya Angelou

29 Bill & Melinda Gates

30 Pele

31 Oprah Winfrey

32 Bobby Moore

33 Albert Schweitzer

34 Emmeline Pankhurst

35 François Pienaar

36 Mikhail Gorbachev

37 Rosa Parks

38 Francis Crick

39 Sir Donald Bradman

40 Dame Kelly Holmes

41 Jamie Oliver

42 Bernard Kouchner

43 Virginia McKenna

44 Anita Roddick

45 Sigmund Freud

46 James Watson

47 Al Gore

48 Margaret Thatcher

49 Max Planck

50 Bob Geldof

51 John F Kennedy

52 Peter Benenson

53 Florence Nightingale

54 William Wilberforce

55 Bob Dylan

56 Elvis Presley

57 Damien Hirst

58 Pope John Paul II

59 Stephen Hawking

60 Jackie Robinson

61 Roger Federer

62 Jesus Christ

63 Leonardo da Vinci

64 Pablo Picasso

65 Charles Darwin

66 Sir David Attenborough

67 Sir Ian Botham

68 Sir Paul McCartney

69 Barack Obama

70 Jane Tomlinson

71 David Beckham

72 Franklin D Roosevelt

73 Gary Player

74 Helen Suzman

75 Lance Armstrong

76 Paul Simon

77 Sir Bobby Charlton

78 Terry Waite

79 Billy Graham

80 Bono

81 George Best

82 Isambard Kingdom Brunel

83 Louis Pasteur

84 Morgan Tsvangirai

85 Queen Elizabeth II

86 Rubén Dario

87 Sir Frank Whittle

88 Daniel Barenboim

89 Ian Douglas Smith

90 John Sentamu