Mark Andrews: What will happen if you give 16-year-olds the vote, and why Crazy Chick Charlotte is tempting me to go to book festival

Anyhow, this week it was announced that Charlotte Church and Nish Kumar had pulled out, because of a tenuous link between the festival's main sponsor and Israel. And if that's not a good enough reason to go along and lend your support, I don't know what is.

But seriously, what has any of this to do with literature? If I wanted to broaden my intellectual horizons, I'm fairly certain I wouldn't be turning to the former presenter of The Mash Report and the singer of Crazy Chick to enrich my mind.

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Robert F Kennedy, the, ahem, eccentric conspiracy theorist challenging Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the race for The White House, reckons a worm may have eaten part of his brain. And having read some of his thoughts on the world, he may well have a point. The scary thing is though, he might actually be the most sensible contender in the contest.

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Are you enjoying the election campaign so far?

So far, the only policy that people are talking about is the one that will almost certainly never happen, Conservative proposals to re-introduce national service for 18-year-olds. Or actually to set up a 'Royal Commission' to talk about it for a few years before quietly leaving it to gather dust at the bottom of a filing cabinet.

But while everybody has spent the week debating whether 18-year-olds would benefit from a beasting by Windsor Davies, the proposal that scares the life out of me has quietly slipped under the radar: Labour's plans to reduce the voting age to 16.

I do wonder if people who think this is a good idea were ever actually teenagers themselves?

And i suspect they certainly haven't spoken to many. Because when was the last time you heard a normal, well-balanced 16- or 17-year-old saying they really wanted the vote?

Yes, you get the usual 'politico' types, the nerdy activists with a bee in their bonnet about something or other. But how many normal teenagers? It certainly wasn't a priority of mine. When I was 16 or 17, my immediate priority was my exams, and then after that, in no particular order, I spent my days thinking about cars, beer and girls. Voting wasn't even a consideration.

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That would be bad enough. But my real fear is that as soon as it emerges the average 16-year-old has about as much interest in politics as I do in Pokemon, there will be the inevitable calls for compulsory 'political education' in schools.

Youngsters already have to endure indoctrination about environmental and sexual matters. Surely we can spare them lectures on Brexit and taxation?