Steve Harvey was hired 'days before' Miss Universe pageant

TV host and comedian Steve Harvey, who made headlines after he mistakenly announced the wrong contestant as Miss Universe 2015 winner, was hired only "days before" the ceremony.

Harvey got ridiculed for wrongly announcing Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutierrez as the 2015 Miss Universe, while the actual winner of the beauty pageant was Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach from Philippines.

Harvey's blunder was reasonable given that he was hired to host the contest "at the last minute", a source told Radar Online.

"Steve was hired to host the pageant at the last minute, just days before the pageant taped and he didn't have enough preparation time", the source said, adding that the 58-year-old had turned down the offer to host the beauty contest earlier this year.

"Steve actually passed on hosting this pageant twice this year before asking for a pie-in-the-sky fee and expecting the organisers to walk away.

"But they eventually paid him a fortune for hosting. The problem was Steve had little time to get ready for the job and not a lot of experience hosting this particular type of event. And after this weekend, it's not likely that he'll ever be asked again, either," added the source.

Furthermore, Harvey made another mistake by misspelling Gutierrez's and Wurtzbach's countries' names on Twitter.

In an apology tweet to both contestants, Harvey wrote "Columbia" instead of "Colombia" and "Philippians" instead of "Miss Philippines".

The tweet was quickly removed.