Sean Connery impersonator enjoys a good likeness of real fame

Is he or isn't he? Sometimes even he gets confused, purring in a Scottish brogue one minute and fading to his usual American lilt when distracted by a potential Bond girl striding by - reports AZCentral.

He has the same silvery hair, the same debonair air, the same black eyebrows that punctuate a face lined with exploits. He has the white tux, the black tux, the perky red carnation ready for lapel duty night after night. (It will die another day.)

If you've had enough martinis, shaken or stirred, you are quickly convinced that this is Sean Connery himself, posing for pics with you at the Mondrian or dining out at Wildfish, where everyone in the room is whispering giddily about him. Could it be?

This is Bond, Dennis Bond: or Dennis Keogh, if you must know, the Valley's Sean Connery/James Bond impersonator extraordinaire.

Keogh has been all of these things: doorman, phone technician, valet, ATM repairman. He's dug ditches for cable companies and even loaded luggage at the airport - and now he's James Bond.

And let's just all be happy for him, because just imagine that at age 58, you could suddenly have a second life infinitely more illustrious than your own. People are excited to see you and there's always a table available at Olive & Ivy.

"Even when I go out as Dennis," says Keogh, his eyes gleaming, "I get mobbed."

"I never looked like the guy early on," Keogh says, but when his hair started to silver, the fan club was born.

"It went from 'Has anyone ever told you that you look like Sean Connery?' to 'Are you Sean Connery?' " he says.

Around that time, he was working as a valet at Scottsdale Fashion Square and the real celebs who dropped in would look for him - like David Spade, Mike Tyson and Amaré Stoudemire ("he knows me personally now," Keogh says).

"If I was on break, they'd ask for James Bond."

Charmed, Keogh worked on the accent, built up the wardrobe and for the past year has been swaggering, Bond-style, all over the globe: gigs on cruises, trips to Vegas, modeling smokeless Crown Seven cigars in 944. (There's talk of an appearance on the Today show.)

"I've been to Hollywood now, and they like me out there," Keogh says.

He even escorted a bride down the aisle and gave her away.

In his newfound existence as a double for 007, Keogh attends the celebrity impersonator convention in Las Vegas (yes, this exists) and hangs out with Paris Hilton 2 and Jack Nicholson-esque. ("She's a very sweet girl," he says.)

He spends nights out in Scottsdale surrounded by models wearing two-inch shorts who want to hang on his arm for a photo and even mugs for the camera with Jerry Colangelo and Joe Arpaio. ("He thought I was Sean Connery," says Keogh. "He asked.") Keogh does grand openings, corporate parties, fashion shows, advertising campaigns - the works.

At events, Keogh holds court near the front doors, positioned so that guests walk in, see him and think they've arrived in gawker heaven.

"I love to see people's reactions," he says one night at Southbridge in Scottsdale. "They think I'm him, and I don't tell 'em I'm not. . . . All right, we've got some newbies coming in."

A 20-something girl rushes over, friends in tow, all atwitter with the possibility of celebrity. Keogh looks like he's found heaven himself.

"Amber, you're stunning," he says to an adorer. "I thought you were Daryl Hannah for a second. You'd all make great Bond girls."

Keogh occupies a weird little space of celebrity-obsessed Americana: the not-quite famous, not quite as fabulous, not quite as fortunate, but almost.

Just another twist of a gene and he might have been Sean Connery, living it up in the Bahamas. Instead, he points at photos of Connery in magazines and says, "Now that's a good likeness." (Of whom, you wonder.)

He carries around a mini tape recorder with Connery's voice on a loop, mimicking and memorizing.

Pictures of Connery and Keogh-as-Connery hang next to each other on his walls at home in Arcadia.

"A shoemaker put an inch and half on my heels because I always get, 'Well, I thought he was taller,' " Keogh says.

His DVD shelf is filled with every Connery film ever made - even the ones that bombed. He has all the costumes, the kilt, the calendar, the coffee-table book - and he's read it. It's highlighted.

His license plate: 007DBLE.

There's even this: Connery and Keogh both had fathers named Joseph, and Connery's dad was born in Wexford, Ireland, as was Keogh's grandfather (also named Joseph) - which means the resemblance could be more than just a coincidence, Keogh points out.

"I think maybe we're related," he says.

He's memorized all Connery's big movie lines, his wives' and children's names, even the speech Connery gave at the American Film Institute awards last year, which Keogh watches on YouTube at least once each week.

"If I ever meet him," Keogh says, "I'm going to do the speech for him. I think he'd be impressed that someone would do that - memorize the whole thing."

He worked for a while on his photo pose - winking one eye, raising an eyebrow, scratching the side of his nose, Connery-style.

"Now I just pose as Dennis," Keogh says. "I just be myself. I think the resemblance is genetic."

Keogh aims to honor his uncanny look-a-like with a very clean, upstanding impersonation. That's water with a lemon twist in Keogh's omnipresent martini glass, and he won't even curse.

"As corny as it sounds, I get my joy in seeing joy in other people's faces," he says. "Everyone loves Sean Connery."

He remembers everyone's name. He autographs like a mad fiend, and has an eternal supply of business cards/postcards/headshots at the ready. He signs them Sean Double 007: a clue in case anyone is still confused in the morning.

"Always be gracious," he says.

There is one little hiccup in Keogh's life as James Bond: He is not the only aging gentleman that heaven anointed with dark eyebrows and silver hair. There are about 20 Connery impersonators out there, and Keogh's mission is clear: Take down this evil empire and rule the faux Bond world. He Googles himself daily to monitor his progress. On his own Web site, www.denniskeogh007.com, he shows photos he has re-created from old Bond stills, starring himself.

He's much more believable than the guy down in Florida, and was even chosen as the Bond look-a-like in Fame Us, a new book about celebrity impersonators.

"If you're a man in your 60s and you have white hair and goatee, you've got a shot," laughs Fame Us author/photographer Brian Howell, of Vancouver, British Columbia. "But then Dennis came along, and there was just no comparison. He's a great guy, a lovely man. He suits the white tux," Howell adds. "He's a true gentleman."

Of his competition, Keogh says, "I respect them for their courage," (just like an old Hollywood pro), but "I think I'm better. I know I'm better. The other look-a-likes, the Johnny Depp, the Paris Hilton, they all come up to me and say, 'You're so much better. You've got the look, you've got the voice.' "

When he's not plotting his takeover or reciting The Hunt for Red October, when he's playing the actual character of Dennis instead, Keogh likes to listen to jazz, spend time with his grandson and write poetry. He has completed over 37 marathons.

"I've got a girlfriend now, too," he says. "She's my age and she's really hot. She looks like Sharon Stone.

"I've come so far in this last year," he adds. "Nobody even knew who I was and now . . . "

Now, he goes out in Scottsdale and leaves all his other lives behind. The fans are swarming, cameras are flashing and the mirage is glorious and shimmering.

"OhmyGod, you're my hero," trills J.D. Guiney, 22, out one night. "I'm from Ireland. I can't believe I'm meeting you. OhmyGod, I love you!"

Keogh seems to grow even taller in his heel-lifts. He hoists his martini glass high. He grins, chats for a bit in his Scottish brogue and moves on to a horde of Peroni models nearby.

The glitter of celebrity hangs in the air, and Guiney turns to the lingering crowd.

"Is it really him?" Guiney asks. "Tell me. Is it him? Is it him? Is it him?"

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