With just two months to go before night courses commence in colleges across the country, new guides to evening classes have just been published by Learning Ireland, Oisin Publications and Wolfhound Press.

And while traditional courses in languages, business and computers remain popular, recent years have seen an explosion of alternative courses for adults.

Film and television are having a striking influence on the variety of disciplines available, with UCD offering a new course called 'Philosophy in The Matrix', following in the wake of a plethora of psychology books published after the release of the sci-fi blockbuster trilogy starring Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne.

Trinity College is also offering its 'Decoding DaVinci' course for the second year running from September, on foot of the global popularity of Dan Brown's DaVinci Code novel and the subsequent film adaptation of the book.

'Monsters and Misfits in Film and Literature' is a new course starting next spring at UCD, indicating that evening courses are not necessarily for enhancing career options.

Another course at Ringsend Technical Institute in Dublin is certainly not being run to boost the job prospects of its students . . . unless they intend to become comedians. 'Humour - every joke is a tiny revolution' is a 10-week course that involves "exploring humour, jokes and joking relationships".

And the Dublin Business School (DBS) is running a 10week diploma course entitled 'Crime Scene Investigation.'

"There seems to be more and more people interested in the whole area due to the popularity of the CSI television programmes, " said DBS's Mary McTigue. "It is an interest-based course for people who work in unrelated areas and just have an interest in crime scene investigation and forensics.

"People will not get into working in forensics after completing the course but they will have a better understanding of how it works. As we do not have laboratory facilities, the course focuses on the theory behind crime scene investigation. We also offer a course in forensic psychology that has also proven very popular with people who work in completely different areas and just have an interest in crime."

'Vocal jamming" is another unique course listed in Learning Ireland's guide, offering students the chance to try some "vocal improvising, chanting, and toning in styles from all over the world".

"Over 300,000 Irish people a year do night courses and the whole area continues to grow each year, " said Kevin Brannigan of Learning Ireland. "We have been running the website www. nightcourses. com and publishing our guide to night courses for the last six years and we have noticed a marked increase in the range and variety of courses on offer.

"In the late 1990s there was a surge in IT courses but now there are more courses focusing on the leisure area as people have more disposable income.

I really noticed this when I heard that there is a course available now called 'Being a Best Man'."