McMullen said: Many of these talented youngsters are nurtured almost from birth, sometimes by parents who are themselves professional folk artists. It does raise a nagging doubt in my mind - are these youngsters being fast-tracked into folk stardom?

It's a long step from Folk Singing, but I believe this to be historically accurate, rarely recognised, and dangerously relevant: In the early 1990s the Communist Party of Great Britain dissolved itself, having lost touch with anything resembling Marxism. A large section of the leadership responsible for this were the children of long-standing Party members. They were people who had they been born into any other family would never have touched the CPGB with a bargepole. but because their parents had them down for the YCL the day they were old enough to qualify, theyjoined. And because they had heard all the lingo from age two onwards, they sounded convincing and shot straight up the leadership board to the top.

I worry to what extent the same thing may become true in the case of those mentioned by McMullen.