Public service broadcaster NTR will not use Piets with faces painted in rainbow colours in this year’s Sinterklaas journal, the tv show for very young children which follows Sinterklaas’ adventures in the run-up to December 5.

‘The brightly coloured Piets of last year will not be back,’ the company’s media director Willemijn Francissen told the Telegraaf in an interview. ‘In retrospect, they were not really a success, did not fit into the tradition and did not look good.’

Broadcasters have been grappling to cope with changes to the appearance of Zwarte Piet – Sinterklaas’ servant – traditionally made up in blackface with big red lips and golden earrings – following mounting protests about racism.

Francissen declined to tell the Telegraaf more about the changes, because it would give too much of this year’s story away. ‘But we all know that you end up black if you go down a chimney and that is what Piet does,’ she said. ‘Black to us means soot, not a skin colour.’

Several leading actors, including ‘head Piet’ Eric van Muiswinkel and reporter Dolores Leeuwin, quit the NTR show last year because of the Piet issue.