David Walliams has sparked accusations of racism over his choice of Halloween costume this year, when the comedian dressed as North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un.

The 46 year old British star posted a photo of himself on Twitter on Tuesday evening before he turned up at Jonathan Ross’ annual Halloween party in north London. He was dressed in a black suit – all well and good – but also with apparent facial prosthetics to alter his eyelids as well as a wig that changed his hairline.

“Happy Halloween from Kim Jong-un,” it was captioned. The image immediately caused a backlash, with some of his followers accusing him of ‘yellow-face’ and ‘racism’.

David WalliamsDavid Walliams dressed as Kim Jong-Un for Halloween this year

“Yellow-face is racist and inappropriate in all instances, delete this,” one use wrote, while another exclaimed “Christ, at what point did you think this was in any way okay…?”

Others argued that Kim Jong-Un’s appalling record on human rights issues in the repressive North Korean regime made him off-limits for comedic purposes.

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Walliams’ controversial choice of costume comes just a couple of weeks after his former ‘Little Britain’ comedy partner, Matt Lucas, said that many aspects of their show would be “too offensive” in 2017 if they were to bring it back. It would be “very hard to play characters of other races now… we would definitely approach it very differently,” he told the Big Issue in October.

He also said that he would do things differently if they made the show again: “We made a more cruel kind of comedy than I'd do now.”

“Society has moved on a lot since then and my own views have evolved,” Lucas added. “Now I think it's lazy for white people to get a laugh just by playing black characters.”

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