I was shooting a wedding when I saw him — the 10-year-old nephew of the bride, strutting and preening in his first rented tuxedo. He was going through a James Bond phase, his father and uncles explained, both amused and a little proud, no doubt remembering the first time they had let themselves become obsessed with Ian Fleming’s secret agent.

For several weeks now, I’ve been researching a Becoming James Bond series for Metro, and without exception, every man I’ve spoken to along the way, from luxury car salesmen to caviar importers to haberdashers to wine and spirits experts, has proved to be a James Bond expert in their own right, able to quote lines from the books and scenes from the movies with obvious familiarity.

Few men are as willing to take their Bond obsession as far as Michael Newitt, a 41-year-old who was arrested in England last month for posing as a secret agent to keep ahead of creditors. According to a story in the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper, Newitt had fooled several local police officers and even his own wife with his story of being “a special operations commander with MI5, the Foreign Office and counter-terrorism units,” and would sleep with a replica gun beside his bed and suddenly disappear on “missions.”

He’d even awarded himself the rank of commander, and had obtained impressive fake I.D. that gave him the title CMG — “a high-ranking award fictitiously presented to James Bond in the story From Russia with Love.”

The magic of Bond is that his appeal is multifold, and changes to suit every stage of a man’s life. For the pre-teen boy, Bond is a more plausible superhero for a time when men in capes and tights are starting to seem a bit ludicrous, even undignified. For the teenager, he’s enviably adult without being dull, suggesting a possibility of life without tedious routine.

For the man in his 20s, all too aware of how routine and responsibility are closing in on him, Bond is a rebel who gets applauded for breaking the rules, enjoying the perquisites of adulthood — risk, reward, luxury and apparently guiltless sex— without obligations to prudence or fidelity.

For men in their 30s and 40s, he’s the consummate professional, esteemed and disciplined, with an apparently perpetual free pass exempting him from midlife crisis. Finally, for older men, Bond is a reminder of a time when they could draw from both youth and experience, a totem of virility that gets renewed every few years onscreen by a new man clearly in his prime.

Women would probably do well to watch a few Bond films when getting to know a man, if only to give them something to talk about.

And while most men aren’t as delusional as “Commander” Newitt, they’d like to imagine that they are, somewhere, half as capable and suave as Bond.

If women are as nurturing as we presume, they’ll let us cling to this lonely, forlorn hope.