Take That’s Howard Donald suffered an awkward blunder this week, after being tricked into thinking a doctored photo of himself and the late David Bowie was in fact real.

The saga played out on Instagram, when the Relight My Fire star took to the site to share the edited snap, which appeared to show him with Bowie and bandmate Mark Owen. To add to the embarrassment, he also shared a lengthy caption about their apparent meeting.

“I was just gonna put this on my stories but then I though [sic] this is much more worthy of the main feed,” he penned.

“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,” the Back For Good hitmaker added.

Will there ever be anyone as musically talented as the man himself? And also someone that changed fashions and music styles like nobody else,” he asked. Doubt it! Was a pleasure Mr Bowie. X.”

While several fans rushed to gush over the music icon in the comments, a number of users clocked that the image looked somewhat familiar – and soon realised all wasn’t as it seemed.

Twitter user Joe Stephenson sent fans on the site wild when he uncovered the real photo – of Howard, Mark and Gary Barlow – and posted a side-by-side shot, confirming Bowie’s head and collar had been photoshopped onto Gary.

While the post has attracted almost 30,000 likes and more than 4,000 retweets, Howard’s not yet addressed the faux pas publicly.