A regular column about the events and personalities of the summer starts With:

Date of Birth: Born in July, nine years ago.

Appearance: Regular. Certainly not stately or plump.

I'm afraid I'm not with you: . . . oh nothing.

So who is this James Joyce fellow, and are his lectures any good? Well, there you have it. James Joyce, the pioneering modernist novelist, having died in 1941, never gave a lecture at the Baileys James Joyce Summer School.

And this "Baileys" character? A commercial sponsor, a purveyor of a sweet, brown intoxicating liqueur. So no lecture there either; although late in the evening, some have been known to speak at his urging. So neither of these people ever shows up.

Has nobody spotted this wicked deception? Apparently not. Or at least nobody seems to mind too much, especially as the event is held in Newman House, in St Stephen's Green ("my green") the very same place where Joyce himself went to university. Patrons seem happy that it's a literary summer school. Is that a sort of purgatorial place where all those unfortunate backsliders, who have been busy smoking ecstasy and injecting marijuana all year, make up for the time they have wasted? On the contrary, a summer school is a place where the most diligent and industrious students go, in the heat of the summer, to attend lectures just for kicks.

And what do they expect to gain from such blatant boot licking? That depends. If you are being educated under the American college system, there are credits for attending. The greater benefits, however, are for the academics. It is easy for the wide world to forget about you for most of the year, and the summer school circuit is a great way of putting yourself about, letting everybody know you are still on the market and working away on the finer details of "Joycean Vulgarities", "Changing Points of View: The Portrait of Anamophosis" or indeed "Bloom and the Politics of Space". Of course, the prospectus also says that the school intends to "consider James Joyce and his works in a way that makes him accessible to the first time reader as well as to the more seasoned student".

What else do I need to know? This year's James Joyce Summer School has a new director, Terence Dolan, Professor of Old and Middle English at UCD. In former years, the event was run by Professor Gus Martin, a meeting with whom was seldom less than an encounter.

You seem to speak from experience: Indeed. Professor Martin once became extraordinarily agitated when I asked him a question about GBS at a James Joyce Summer School event. This was something which he, "Joycean to the core", felt to be wholly inappropriate.

You poor fellow. You'll be more circumspect next time, I trust? Sadly, Professor Martin, who was the original fire behind the summer school, as well as one of its prime attractions, died last year.

"Were there testimonials? Don't you start . . . oh, alright then can play the Joycean too. . . Numerous. From clergyman, British naval officer, well known author, city man, hospital nurse, lady, mother of five, absentminded beggar.