CREDITS THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, 1974 dir: Guy Hamilton Roger Moore Christopher Lee Britt Ekland Desmond Llewelyn Maud Adams

“He's not like other men... he has three...”

The golden bullet of triple-nippled ace hitman Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) has Bond’s name on it, literally.

007 traces its manufacture to gun expert Lazar in Macau, the former Portuguese enclave west of Hong Kong, where he inevitably gravitates to the casino, the Floating Macau Palace, Inner Harbour, Rua das Lorchas. As its name suggests, the casino is a converted vessel, moored on the peninsula’s western shore.

Bond takes the ferry across the bay to Kowloon, the mainland suburb of Hong Kong, where he follows Andrea Anders (Maud Adams) to the Peninsula Hotel, Salisbury Road at Nathan Road, which does indeed run a fleet of green Rolls-Royce limousines (how did the globe-trotting bon viveur not know this?). The Peninsula had previously been seen in the 1955 anti-Commie adventure Soldier of Fortune, with Clark Gable and Susan Hayward.

Also in Kowloon are the fictitious ‘Bottoms Up’ club, which was situated amid the neon dazzle of the Tsim Sha Tsui shopping district, and Hai Fat’s estate, the Dragon Garden on Castle Peak Road, Castle Peak.

MI6 field HQ is deep inside the tilted, rusting hulk of the Queen Elizabeth, which was grounded in Hong Kong harbour.

The trail of Scaramanga leads to Bangkok, and a boat chase through the klongs, the network of canals criss-crossing the city. The karate school is Muang Boran, the Ancient City, the world’s largest outdoor museum, housing scaled-down versions of the famous buildings and temples of Bangkok. It’s about 20 miles east of town on Sukhumvit Highway in Changwat Samut Prakan (admission charge; tel: 226.1936).

The kickboxing match, at which Bond first meets Scaramanga, was filmed in Bangkok’s Ratchadamnoen Stadium, Ratchadamnoen Nok Road (tel: 281.4205).

But, most famously, Scaramanga’s island hideout is Khow-Ping-Kan, one of a chain of tiny jungle-covered limestone pillars in Phang Nga Bay at Phuket, on the tip of the Malay peninsula. At the time of filming, a remote and undiscovered paradise, it’s now overrun by tourists taking the 54 mile bus journey, north from Phuket Town, and the boat trip out to see ‘James Bond Island’.

HARD COPY: For the details of the filming locations of 1,600 of your favourite movies, check out The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations. 464 pages of fascinating facts, illustrated with over 1,000 original photographs.