Top Gear's Hammond joins Lab Rats

Hammond previously presented science show Brainiac

Top Gear host Richard Hammond is to present a children's television series about science.

The 38-year-old will front Richard Hammond's Lab Rats - set in the world of a secret underground laboratory - on BBC One and the CBBC channel.

The £2m series will ask children to carry out a number of experiments and messy challenges.

Lab Rats - which Hammond is jointly producing - will be broadcast early next year.

Hammond presents the show as the "Willy Wonka of the science world" living in a stately home with a secret laboratory below the stables, where he keeps his cars.

Peter Wyles, who devised the format, said of the former Brainiac presenter: "Richard is the perfect person to host this series - he lives and breathes the world of popular science."