Chippenham TV star Izzie Balmer has been signed up by the BBC for another antiques show.

Izzie, the jewellery expert at Wessex Auction Rooms, is to make her debut this week as an expert on BBC1’s Bargain Hunt.

BBC chiefs have snapped up Izzie for Bargain Hunt following her popularity as a star of Antiques Road Trip, on which she has regularly appeared for three years and will continue to do so.

Izzie, 32, is proving so popular with viewers that she now has her own fan club, the Izzie Balmer Appreciation Society, with 2,700 members on Facebook.

On Friday 12.15pm Izzie will be guiding her team against a team led by Bargain Hunt stalwart Phil Serrell.

Her colleague, Wessex Auction Rooms director and toy specialist Tim Weeks, who has been a regular on the show himself for five years, commented: “It’s really great that Bargain Hunt has asked Izzie to be part of the show, and shows the depth of knowledge and expertise we have here at Wessex Auction Rooms. 

“Bargain Hunt is truly a daytime BBC TV institution having been on air since the year 2000.  It’s a fantastic programme to be part of and attracts contestants from all walks of life and the generational landscape”

TV pundits are now predicting that Izzie could next be promoted to join ‘the big one’, as an expert of BBC1’s Sunday night antique flagship The Antiques Roadshow.

But modest Izzie isn’t sure about that.

“I think you need to be more knowledgeable than me to be on that show, although if they called me up then absolutely I’d go," she said.