A young boy from west Belfast has gone viral for his Mr Bean Halloween costume, even getting the attention of Rowan Atkinson himself.
Paul McKenna-Chapman, from Andersonstown, is just 7 years old and his rendition of the classic character has already gained more than 340,000 likes on Facebook, at the time of writing.
His mother, Michelle McKenna, said: “I’ve just always called him Mr Bean — he’s dead clumsy and just loves making everyone laugh, he’s just a wee character.
“I don’t think he understands how big it is.
“Everyone knows him, he was out at Mountpanther Farm Park near Newcastle yesterday and everyone was recognising him.
“He was about the doors [trick or treating] and people were recognising him.”
The viral photo was posted by Colin Neighbourhood Partnership, after Paul won a £50 Amazon voucher at their fancy dress competition.
The community organisation puts on events for people in the Colin area.
Ciaran Boyd, who works for Colin Neighbourhood Partnership, said: “This young man has brought a whole light onto the area, so it’s great.
“We do a lot of events around the Colin area, to create a bit of positivity.
“Some of the deprivation we see here, sometimes it gets a bad name, wee things like this really make it worthwhile.
“People were commenting from all corners of the world, from New Zealand to Cambodia — they said he looks more like Mr Bean than Mr Bean does!”
As well as thousands of likes, their viral post of Paul’s costume also attracted over 8,000 comments and has been shared over 14,000 times.
“It just exploded and I think it’s a great news story,” added Ciaran.
“Sometimes a lot of people like to focus on the negative stories, but it shows there’s a great community spirit that we do our best to have.”
Read more
Paul’s viral costume also caught the attention of the That Prize Guy page on Facebook, who gave him a £100 Smyths gift card.
After the huge reaction to Paul’s costume on social media, Colin Neighbourhood Partnership reached out to Rowan Atkinson’s PR team to see if the actor could send Paul a short video.
Although he was too busy to send a video, he did offer to send him a signed photo.
Michelle has said that although the costume wasn’t hard to put together, the secret lies with Paul himself.
She said: “I think he looks like him, they are really alike. It’s just the facial expression you can see in the picture too – he looks like him.
“We got the blazer and the top from H&M and stickers were from Amazon. The teddy, briefcase and the stickers were off Amazon too.
“It came out well with the pictures, he gets on like him too.”