Ivan Yates

So I'm not so sure.

I think one of the things that makes people driven is when a parent dies young because you actually spend the rest of your life trying to please your father and you'll never succeed.

And when I see a very driven person in politics or in business, I just say, tell me about your parents.

And nearly always you find a parent died when they were very young, you know, before they properly matured as an adult.

And it makes them a driven person.

What's the source of that drive?

Well, the source of that drive is to please your father and to outperform hunger, ambition, that sort of thing.

Yeah, or you could be running away from something, you know, and I've done a bit of psychological stuff, psychotherapy in my time.

And basically, I'm a great believer in the subconscious mind and what you can achieve.

I should actually tell you, the main reason I'm doing this is that I have a book coming out in the autumn called The Game of Life.

And basically...

So my claim to fame is I left school at 16, didn't sit the leaving cert.

That was in 76, 50 years later in 26.

So I've been in politics and media and business and still got my finger in a number of pies that everything I ever learned outside of a classroom environment is in the book as a kind of self-help book.

And looking forward to that.

Well, put it like this, put it like this, you know, the snowflakes that are 21 today are not like snowflakes in my day insofar as that.

Put it like this, like I would say when I was 21, I was, you know, I'd cut you.

I was so hungry and sharp insofar as that no sense of entitlement, felt I had no qualifications, I had no proper salary whatsoever.

Like I came home to inherit the farm my mother had for the next 40 years.

So that didn't work out great, although I'm still there to this day.