Well, this is embarrassing.

Take That's Howard Donald generated quite a stir on social media over the weekend because of a photo he shared on Instagram.

The picture in question shows him and his bandmate Mark Owen with David Bowie, and he captioned it with a very sincere tribute to the late icon, saying "For sure I was very nervous meeting @davidbowie as I’m not so comfortable around other famous people and can get star struck quite easily, but he was so normal and down to earth which made me feel at ease.

"Plus it was an opportunity I was never gonna miss and so glad I had the balls to ask. Will there ever be anyone as musically talented as the man himself?"

The problem is, as people were quick to point out, the picture was photoshopped and the original was Howard and Mark with their bandmate Gary Barlow.

While several people have leapt to the pop star's defence - saying that Donald may well have met Bowie in the past and was simply mixing up the circumstances of their meeting - he has yet to clarify that this was the case.

Either way, it provided us with a quite amusing distraction. Or maybe he's just trolling us all?