Some lives, some deeds, shine out like beacons. They point the way and they reassure those who might be faltering or in despair. On a sunny afternoon you don't need beacons. You might not even notice them. But on a stormy night, a beacon is a life-saver.

That's not an original thought. But it struck me forcefully twice over the weekend: once when I was reading the tributes to Paul Newman, and once - more incongruously, you may think - when I was watching Match of the Day.

The Hollywood giant first. It's always sad when a good man dies. But how apt that, even with his death, Newman should remind us that human beings have a huge capacity to give as well as to grab. At the very moment when the world is reaping the whirlwind sown by unbridled corporate greed, along come the obituaries to remind us of what Newman did. He launched a food business that exploited his fame and dazzling blue eyes - then gave away all the profits (£130 million so far) to charities providing holidays for children with cancer.

Well, you might say, Newman could afford to be generous. He was rich and successful. That's true. So are lots of people. But not many can resist the demon inside, urging them to get even richer - even if that means ignoring the misery piled up like train wrecks on either side of their gold-paved path through life. To me, Newman epitomised what humanity is, or should be, all about. It's a belief that if you have more bread than you need, you share it with those who don't have enough. And if you don't have more bread than you need, you share it anyway.

I accept that this is easier for individuals to do than corporations, which must answer to shareholders, some of which are pension funds desperately trying to stop our life savings from gurgling down the plughole. For better or worse, we live in a capitalist system. But does the system have to be quite so ruthlessly and callously profit-orientated? Wouldn't the people at the top feel much better about themselves - and enjoy rather more admiration from the rest of us - if they tempered their drive for profits with more charitable thoughts and deeds?

Bizarre though it may seem, that is what occurred to me during Match of the Day. As an incorrigible Arsenal fan, I have no great love of Aston Villa Football Club. But what Birmingham's finest have done this season lifts them far above the petty tribal loyalties of football. They have put compassion before cash. In the mercenary world of professional sport, that is remarkable. In the Premier League - probably the most money-obsessed sports conglomeration in world history - it is astonishing.

For some time Villa have had a connection with Acorns, a trust running hospices for very ill children in the West Midlands. The club help to fund a hospice in Selly Oak, and their players and manager, Martin O'Neill, have visited the place and brought some cheer into the lives of families with little to be cheerful about.

But this year Villa took the relationship a symbolic step farther. When their shirt-sponsorship deal with an online gaming company ended, they decided not to seek another commercial sponsor. Instead (following the lead of the Spanish footballing giant Barcelona, who have Unicef's name on their shirts) they decided to emblazon the word Acorns across their home and away kits. The season is only a few weeks old, but the charity says that the results have already been stunning. Each time Villa play, the Acorns name reaches a global audience of millions. The charity's website has received hits from 82 countries. As a result, its fundraisers are hoping to raise millions in extra donations - money that's desperately needed. Giving round-the-clock care to very ill children is expensive: about £450 for each child, every day. And at any time there are 600 of them in Acorn's hospices.

Of course, the cynics have scoffed. Villa's shirt-sponsorship deal, they point out, was worth only £2 million a year - peanuts in a league where top players change clubs for £30 million. And aligning themselves with such a worthy cause has won Villa priceless good publicity.

All of which is true. But does it matter? Is a good deed less valuable to the poor and the ill because it is triggered by questionable motives?

I would rather hold up Villa's initiative as one of those beacons that light the way for all of us in dark times. It has already been emulated by lowly Weymouth FC, who have struck a similar deal with their own local hospice. Football teams across Britain - and especially those clubs with their snouts buried in troughs of Russian or Arab megabucks - should swiftly follow suit.

But why stop there? Why don't all those banks and their fat-cat executives, whose avaricious misdeeds have caused such trouble over the past year, start to reconstruct their businesses and their lives on socially responsible lines? By which I mean taking responsibility for all aspects of society, not just their own wallets. Why doesn't everybody who has achieved some degree of success in life - which means you, and even me - do the same? The mad dash for cash has led our society to the brink of catastrophe. There has never been a better time to embark on a complete rethink of our priorities.

Back in the 1730s, when the gulf between stinking rich and huddled poor was almost as great in London as it is now, a group of wealthy, successful celebrities - Handel and Hogarth among them - put their influence and money behind a startling new project begun by a sea captain, Thomas Coram. It was a home for “foundlings” - abandoned children. Soon this trickle of compassion became a flood. All of Mayfair flocked to support good causes. Institution after institution was founded in the 1740s and 1750s to help the sick and the destitute.

I daresay that Handel and Hogarth also had an eye on the good publicity they would achieve with their well-trumpeted good works. But so what? Posterity remembers only that philanthropy on a grand scale was born in Britain in the 18th century. Let it be reborn in the 21st.

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