Chris Ramsey is announced as host of Little Mix’s new BBC talent show The Search

Chris Ramsey is announced as host of Little Mix’s new BBC talent show The Search after winning a legion of fans on Strictly Come Dancing

Strictly Come Dancing semi-finalist Chris Ramsey has been named as host of brand new entertainment show Little Mix The Search.

The stand-up comedian, 33, will appear alongside the group, made up of Perrie Edwards, 26, Jesy Nelson, 28, Jade Thirlwall, 27, and Leigh-Anne Pinnock, 28, as they search for a new wave of talented singers to mentor. 

Chris said in a statement released to MailOnline: ‘Since the moment I heard their first single, I knew I wanted to be the fifth member of Little Mix… sadly it looks like I’m going to have to settle for just hosting their new show with them!’

‘I wanted to be the fifth member of Little Mix’: Strictly Come Dancing semi-finalist Chris Ramsey has been named as host of brand new entertainment show Little Mix The Search

Little Mix said: ‘We’re so happy Chris has come on board to present The Search. He’s genuinely one of the funniest people we know and he’ll bring loads of his South Shields charm to the show. We can’t wait.’   

The Search will see the multi-award winning group create bands and become mentors to new talent. 

The singers who make it into new bands will live together and gain access to Little Mix’s inner circle who have contributed to their phenomenal success, including vocal coaches, song writers and producers. 

Little Mix shot to fame back in 2011 on the eighth series of ITV talent show, helmed by music mogul Simon Cowell, 60.  

Similarly to the format of their forthcoming programme, the quartet all auditioned individually and were put into a band during the boot camp stage of the competition.

After becoming the first group to win The X Factor, Little Mix went on to become one of the most successful British bands of all time, achieving four platinum certified albums and 16 certified singles in the UK alone. 

Cowell previously insisted he holds no grudge against his former proteges after they brought the release of The Search forward from 2021 to spring 2020. 

Sparks flew when the talent show boss said he had the idea for X Factor: The Band – which was set for a 2020 release – before Little Mix offered him a role of co-producer on their own BBC prime time show The Search. 

He said in an interview on Heart FM: ‘With music, radio, TV – sometimes you just gotta do something quick and the truth was is that I have a group show which I launched in America, I think four, five years ago…

‘We’ve always decided to do a group show in the UK so we’d agreed with ITV that we were gonna do X Factor Groups in 2020.

‘So that was all fine and then we were going to do the All Stars version this year and then when we found out that the Little Mix show was gonna go out in 2020, I didn’t want to follow that show since we’d already planned it years ago. 

‘I thought, well we’ll just bring it forward. Simple as that. And it wasn’t like some grudge against Little Mix or whatever because you know I owe those girls a lot you know. Even though we gave them a launch pad, they sold a lot of records…

‘I thought their idea was a great idea. Sometimes you wanna be the first one to do it in a certain country.’  

Little Mix were represented by Simon’s record label Syco, releasing four albums, until a fall out with the group’s managers Modest! last year. 

Little Mix The Search is a ModestTV production for BBC One, commissioned by Charlotte Moore, Director BBC Content and Kate Phillips, Controller of Entertainment Commissioning.  

Little Mix The Search is coming to BBC One and BBC iPlayer in spring 2020.